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California Shooting

October 6, 2011 by · Comments Off on California Shooting 

California ShootingCalifornia Shooting, A blood bath before sunrise on a Wednesday Cupertino cement plant sparked a massive search that spread through a neighborhood in San Jose, where SWAT teams in heavy armor sweeping house to house, searching desperately for the murderer.

By the time darkness fell, three people were killed, seven others had been treated for gunshot wounds in hospitals and shot the suspect, Shareef Allman, remain at large.

Allman, an operator of 47 years of age, heavy machinery in the Lehigh Cement Plant Permanent Hanson, had been in a safety meeting with more than a dozen co-workers when, police said, pulled a pistol from waist and began shooting. One of the survivors of the shooting, said the Mercury News that Allman was under pressure at work after repeated allegations of dangerous driving in the quarry.

The shooting started a day-long chase along the highway corridor that separates Homestead Cupertino and Sunnyvale. Schools entered into lock mode and told students to stay home, and residents nervously trying to figure out whether the gunman might be in his backyard when he saw police helicopters hovering over the neighborhood.

With search dogs streams winding through and around schools, the persecution continued into the evening.

“During the night we will continue the search for the suspects with the advice you receive,” said Sheriff Laurie Smith. “We know the area you are looking for is clear. Neighbourhoods adjoining please close the doors, as does every night. … We still believe that the suspect is armed and extremely dangerous.”

Smith called for Allman to surrender peacefully. So did some of his friends, including some of the most important South Bay black leaders, who described him as a peacemaker who campaigned against domestic violence and acted as a mentor for troubled youth.

“This is not the Shareef we know,” said the Rev. Jethroe “Jeff” Moore II, head of the NAACP Silicon Valley.

The day began at 4 am in a trailer where workers and supervisors gathered in the morning. Allman took a position that had been practiced in the shooting area, where they often went with his .40 caliber pistol. Then methodically down a line of co-workers, shooting at each one until they fell, and then move to the next, as if you were taking target practice, authorities said.

Authorities identified the dead as Mark Munoz, 59, of San Jose, Juan Vallejos, 51, of San Jose, Guadalupe and Manuel Pinon, 48, Newman, all employees of Lehigh.

“He pulled out a Glock and just shoot everyone and kept firing,” said Mike Ambrose, 45, a union representative who was shot in the arm.

Allman then recovered an AK-47 assault rifle he had brought with him to the quarry, apparently intended to settle complaints about its safety record as a truck driver at the plant. Then, when the shooting stopped, who disappeared in the dark in a Mercury sedan in 1999, until shortly before 7 am, when he left his car at a Pho restaurant in Homestead Road.

Shortly before 7 am, Craig Corfield, who lives in the neighborhood across the street from what will be the new headquarters of Apple, he heard three loud explosions. “I knew they were gunshots, but thought, ‘That sounded funky,'” said Corfield. “Ten minutes later I heard sirens, and five minutes after I got out of our garage and there were helicopters everywhere.”

According to police, tried to commandeer the car Allman of a woman in the parking lot of a campus of Hewlett-Packard in Homestead Road, in the shooting of his arm, but he could not get the car.

At 7 am, had melted in the neighborhood along the border with Cupertino headquarters in Sunnyvale, where for the rest of the day sheriff’s deputies and SWAT teams around the South Bay through the streets heavily armored vehicles, searching every house and yard with the help of hounds.

“Search dogs were able to get a whiff of the car but were stopped by the rain,” said the sheriff.

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