How Cupertino homicide suspect Shareef Allman eluded huge manhunt for 22 hours
By Sean Webby and Lisa Fernandez
Mercury News
Posted: 10/06/2011 07:24:02 AM PDT
Updated: 10/07/2011 01:30:55 PM PDT
For 22 tense hours, Shareef Allman somehow eluded an army of officers, search dogs and helicopters in one of Silicon Valley's biggest manhunts ever.
He had melted into a Sunnyvale neighborhood Wednesday morning, stashing weapons along the way -- hiding an assault rifle under a garbage bin and propping another against a utility box.
A massive search of about 400 houses turned up nothing. Then, an hour after sunrise Thursday, Silicon Valley's most wanted man suddenly appeared, crouching between two cars in a driveway, with a gun in his hand and a dog barking inside the house.
Within seconds, three Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies spotted Allman and ordered him to give up. Instead, he died in a hail of gunfire.
Terry Bowman, a lawyer representing the deputies in the investigation of Allman's death, said the officers told her Allman made no attempt to surrender, uttered a suicidal comment and pointed the gun at one of them.
"We're just glad its over," said Lisa Young, who lives across the street from where Allman's run came to an end. "It's been nerve-racking around here."
The portrait of the 47-year-old quarry worker and single dad that emerged Thursday -- a day after he gunned down three co-workers and wounded seven other people -- was not that of a spiritual, peace-loving man who snapped. It was one of a coldblooded killer who sheriff's officials said kept a handgun at home hidden in the cutout pages of a Bible.
Sheriff's officials revealed Thursday that Allman used a rope and piece of plywood to jam shut a door and trap about a dozen co-workers in a trailer at a Cuperitno quarry during a predawn meeting Wednesday. Then he began shooting.
While on the run a little more than an hour later, Allman made a walkie-talkie call back to the terrified survivors. His message: He was coming back to finish them off, sheriff's officials told this newspaper.
He never returned. Wednesday's massive hunt for Allman moved about five miles away to a neighborhood across the street from a Hewlett-Packard campus. A surveillance video released Thursday by the Sheriff's Office shows Allman walking past a liquor store with a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Soon after, sheriff's officials believe he placed assault rifles in two hiding places along Homestead Road -- and left a shotgun in the trunk of his 1999 Mercury. Sheriff's officials said Thursday they believed he could have been preparing for a final shootout.
Carrying a bulging bag of ammo, he next turned up in the HP parking lot, where he shot a 60-year-old woman in a botched carjacking. Then he disappeared.
As helicopters searched overhead and schools locked their doors, officers picked through the neighborhood with German shepherds and bloodhounds, clued to Allman's scent through his abandoned car.
Deputies said they were not sure how Allman had evaded them all night. He could have hidden in a home or a garage, but there's no evidence he knew anyone there.
Deputies finally confronted Allman about 7:30 a.m. hiding behind a car in a driveway off Lorne Way.
Sheriff Laurie Smith did not specify whether the gunman fired any shots, saying those details are being investigated by the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety.
She did say that the suspect displayed his gun to deputies "in a threatening manner."
A relative of the family who lives at the house said her daughter's dog, Choco, began barking shortly before 7:30 a.m. The daughter looked outside and saw a man crouching in the driveway, according to Grace Chu.
Chu said her daughter waved to two passing patrol cars. Just moments later, Allman lay dead in the driveway.
"I guess Choco's a hero," said Chu, who added that her daughter, who was whisked out of the home with her baby, did not want to be interviewed.
Smith took the time to praise her deputies.
"Our deputies displayed remarkable courage and we believe their actions saved lives," Smith said. "The community should view them as heroes."
The deputies who fired on Allman were identified as Lindsay Crist, 24, a deputy for less than two years; Christopher Hilt, 24, a two-year deputy; and 30-year-old Fabian De Santiago, with the office for 4 ½ years. One of the deputies radioed in that Allman had suffered a gunshot wound to the head.
Smith also praised emergency workers, hundreds of deputies and officers from neighboring agencies -- Sunnyvale, San Jose, Palo Alto and others -- and the Red Cross for their part in the huge manhunt and aftermath of the chaos.
"This is a sad day," said the Rev. Jethroe "Jeff" Moore II, head of the Silicon Valley NAACP, a friend of Allman's who had pleaded for him to surrender. "My heart goes out to all the families."
Killed in Wednesday's shootings were Mark Muñoz, 59, of San Jose; John Vallejos, 51, of San Jose; and Manuel Guadalupe Piñon, 48, of Newman.
Tom Chizmadia, spokesman for Lehigh Hanson's Permanente Cement Plant, said the company is providing grief counseling, paying wages to all employees as long as the plant is closed and paying for the funerals.
"We do not want the families to have any financial burden from this," Chizmadia said.
Hospital officials reported Thursday that at least three of the shooting victims are expected to recover. A female patient at the hospital, the unidentified carjacking victim, remains in fair condition.
At Regional Medical Center of San Jose, shooting victim Jorge Moreno is listed in good condition. Stanford University Medical Center admitted one emergency room patient Wednesday, but would not provide details.
Bill Hoyt, secretary-treasurer for Teamsters Local 287, said Allman was in his office Friday discussing a recent three-week suspension he said was unfair. The suspension was apparently the result of Allman's truck hitting an overhead power line while dumping a load and although he was off suspension and back at work, Hoyt said "he was unhappy with the length of the suspension he didn't feel the punishment fit the crime."
Allman had filed a discrimination complaint with federal regulators against the cement plant about a month before Wednesday's shootings. But details about the allegations were not immediately available.
Company officials had no immediate comment about the complaint Thursday afternoon.
Helen Bernaciak, who lives two doors down from where the shooting happened, said she woke up Thursday morning to the sound of gunfire.
Bernaciak said she was surprised to find out the suspect was found two doors away.
"I figured he was gone, or I wouldn't have been able to sleep," Bernaciak said. "I was so in shock this morning to find out he wasn't. I wished I knew more. I'd like to know, 'Where was he? Where was he hiding?' "
Staff writers Mark Gomez and John Woolfolk contributed to this report. Contact Sean Webby at 408-920-5003.
Union sets up trust fund
Donations for the families
of the shooting victims are being accepted by the United Labor Bank at 2550 N. First St., Suite 102, San Jose, CA 95131
The name of the trust fund is: Teamsters Local 287/Lehigh Hanson Victim Donation Account
2 comments:
Allow me to rant: this disgusting, verminous, failed mutation of nature of an erectus, I have nothing but the highest form of contempt for its diseased kind. It is a cancer on this earth. It is the cockroach of humanity.
This erectus's actions fit a pattern: angry negro too stupid to understand what is going on, fails to comply with the white man's rules - the same white man who has: (1) kindly and lovingly given the negro a standard of living his fellow erecti in da mudderland could never dream of (there, the white man's benevolence is limited to free food for baby feeding for lots of breeding); (2) kindly and lovingly explained to the deprived negro that all its failings are the fault of the evil white man - then goes into a murderous rage.
Two recent examples of the EXACT SAME scenario :
Omar Thornton - Hartsford brewery
Cookie Thornton (!) - St Louis city council meeting
It is AMAZING in fact how similar the facts are. The were all too stupid (in a malevolent way) to perform at level. When reprimanded, they immediately blamed The Man.
Only difference in this case is that Allmann was too stupid to understand that his victims were taco bunnies.
California is guilty of aiding and abetting these murders. While the state has sovereign immunity, by disarming the residents and preventing state-wide uniformity in concealed carry, it helps bad guys get away with literal murder. Now, dingbat Gov. Brown has banned open-but-unloaded (sic) open carry in Calif. The law of unintended consequences will prove the governor wrong.
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