Deadliest Bay Area shooting since 1993
The gun attack at a San Jose light rail yard Wednesday was the deadliest Bay Area mass shooting since a man with Marin ties killed eight in a San Francisco high-rise building in 1993.
The toll was the same in both shootings, with the gunmen killing eight people and themselves.
On July 1, 1993, Gian Luigi Ferri opened fire at 101 California St. in the 34th floor San Francisco law firm office of Pettit & Martin.
The shooting led Congress to pass historic gun reform legislation, a sinceexpired federal ban on military style firearms.
The 55-year-old failed entrepreneur’s motive was unknown. Ferri had fallen on hard times. His Woodland Hills mortgage business was a shambles. He complained of bad credit and failed real estate deals.
A senior attorney with Pettit & Martin said Ferri had a 10-year-old grievance with the firm over a real estate transaction in Indianapolis that had soured. But he could not explain the violent rampage, saying that Ferri had never filed a complaint against his lawyers and had not been to the firm’s offices in the financial district since 1983.
“Everybody he shot had nothing to do with him — ever,” said the attorney, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
Ferri once ran a real estate investment firm in Larkspur. Ferri had been a defendant in a lawsuit that accused him of accepting $480,000 from investors but refusing to return any profits. The California Franchise Tax Board filed a $3,060.02 lien against Ferri in Marin County for non-payment of personal income taxes in 1990.
Officials with the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services said at the time that Ferri worked for the department as a counselor for five years in the 1970s.
There are no agreedupon definitions of what constitutes a mass shooting, according to a Rand Corp. analysis last month, though Congress in 2013 defined mass killing as a single incident that leaves three or more people dead. The Associated Press and other organizations have defined it as four people fatally injured, excluding the shooter.
Here’s a list of other Bay Area mass shootings.
July 28, 2019: Gilroy Garlic Festival. A gunman identified as 19-year-old Santino William Legan killed three people and wounded 17 others at the Gilroy Garlic Festival before committing suicide in a shootout with responding police officers.
June 23, 2019: Private home, San Jose. A standoff with police ended with five people killed, including the suspect, identified as 66-year-old Chi Dinh Ta, in what police said was a quadruple murder and suicide driven by family conflict.
June 14, 2017: UPS facility, San Francisco. Jimmy Lam, a UPS worker, shot and killed three co-workers at a company facility. Two people were wounded. Lam killed himself after police told him to put down the gun. Lam, 38, a UPS driver, filed a grievance in earlier 2017 claiming he was working excessive overtime, a union official said at the time.
March 21, 2012: Oikos University, Oakland. One L. Goh, of Alameda killed seven people and wounded three others in a shooting rampage at Oikos University, a small Oakland nursing college.
Oct. 5, 2011: Lehigh Hanson’s Permanente Cement Plant, Cupertino. Shareef Allman gunned down three coworkers at a cement plant and wounded seven other people before he was shot to death by police in a gunfight. Allman kept a handgun at home hidden in the cutout pages of a Bible.
March 30, 2009: Private home, Santa Clara. Devan Kalathat shot and killed his 11-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, his brother-in-law and his wife, and their 11-monthold daughter. He killed himself. Kalathat’s wife was critically wounded, but survived.
March 21, 2009: Oakland police shooting. Lovelle Mixon shot to death four Oakland police officers, two during what appeared to be a routine traffic stop by motorcycle officers. The other two officers were members of a SWAT team who were killed inside an apartment where the gunman was hiding. Officers shot and killed the 27-yearold parolee.
Nov. 14, 2008: SiPort, Santa Clara. Jing Hua Wu, 47, of Mountain View, shot and killed three coworkers at a semiconductor company after he had been laid off.
Nov. 23, 2006: Private home, Oakland. Asmeron Gebreselassie shot his sister in law and two of her relatives during a Thanksgiving dinner at the family’s home, to avenge what he believed was his sister in law’s role in his own brother’s death.
Dec. 6, 2003: Private home, Santa Clara. Todd Vernon shot and killed his wife and his three children, before turning a .357 Magnum on himself.
June 21, 2000: Santos Linguisa Factory, San Leandro. Stuart Alexander, nicknamed the “Sausage King,” gunned down three government meat inspectors, missing a fourth who ran for his life, inside the the Santos Linguisa Factory. Alexander was convicted of the murders, which were caught on surveillance video, and died on Death Row of natural causes at age 44.
Feb. 16, 1988: ESL Incorporated, Sunnyvale. Richard Wade Farley shot and killed seven coworkers and injured four others at ESL Incorporated, a defense contractor. Farley draped himself in 98 pounds of guns and ammunition when he went on the shooting spree inspired by his obsession with a female colleague who did not accept his advances over three years.
Dec. 8, 1986: Private home, Oakland. David Welch burst into an East Oakland home and shot six people, including two toddlers, in their heads as they slept. The 28-year-old heroin and cocaine dealer, who remains on Death Row, went from room to room shooting his victims on Pearmain Street. Welch had been upset over the breakup with his 16-yearold girlfriend, so he killed her and five of her relatives and friends.