Dark history of block where officer was slain

More than a year ago, long before Adel Sambrano Ramos allegedly shot and killed Sacramento police Officer Tara O’Sullivan in the backyard of his North Sacramento house, another man just two doors down was hatching a plan to shoot three women.

It was the residence of Albert Wong, the 36yearold former Army infantryman who gunned down three female counselors at a Yountville veterans program, according to public records and neighbors.

In his corner house on the 200 block of Redwood Avenue, police say, Wong studied murdersuicides on his computer on March 8, 2018, before leaving the next morning to shoot up his former Wine Country treatment center.

There is no indication that Wong or Ramos, 45, knew each other. Sacramento police and other agencies involved in the Yountville shooting had no comment about the proximity of the two men.

But it’s not the only tragedy linked to the neighborhood or Ramos, who has been charged with murder and other criminal counts in the assaultrifle slaying of O’Sullivan on June 19 as she helped a woman gather her belongings.

Just two weeks before he allegedly killed the rookie cop, Ramos invited his friend Christopher Brown to his Redwood Avenue home. More than 20 years earlier, Brown was involved in the last lineofduty death of a female Sacramento police officer.

On Oct. 17, 1997, Brown’s car collided with a patrol car driven by Officer Emily Morgenroth, a Pleasanton native responding to a report of a stolen car. She was killed. Brown’s bloodalcohol content was reportedly twice the legal limit, and he pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutors to DUI, receiving a year in jail.

“I was coming home. Had a couple beers,” Brown said last week, standing beyond crime tape as police gathered evidence from the O’Sullivan shooting. “I regret that every night of my life. Every night I say a prayer for her.”

There are no suggestions the strange circumstances are anything but a dark coincidence, but neighbors have noted the connections.

According to police reports, on March 8, 2018, Wong returned home from scouting the Pathway Home facility in Yountville where he had been kicked out. He spent the night in Sacramento searching the internet, looking up murdersuicide information.

The next morning, Wong drove to Yountville in a rental car and burst into a goingaway party for an employee, police said. He took psychologist Jennifer Gonzales

Shushereba, then seven months pregnant, hostage along with Clinical Director Jennifer Golick and Executive Director Christine Loeber. He would kill the women and then himself after a brief shootout with a police officer. On Thursday, mourners flocked to a Roseville (Placer County) church to

pay homage to O’Sullivan at a memorial service and funeral. She was only 26, the same age as Morgenroth.

Matthias Gafni and Gwendolyn Wu are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: mgafni@ sfchronicle.com, gwendolyn.wu@ sfchronicle.com