This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The army veteran who killed three women after a siege in California completed dangerous missions in Afghanistan that left him anxious and wary when he came home, according to people who knew him.

Gunman and three hostages found dead at US veterans' home Read more

Authorities said Albert Wong, 36, who served a year and returned highly decorated, took the women hostage on Friday at a Yountville veterans center where he had sought help. Hours later, authorities found all four bodies in a room at the center that aids people with post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injuries.

The victims were identified as Pathway Home executive director Christine Loeber, 48; clinical director Jennifer Golick, 42; and Jennifer Gonzales Shushereba, 32, a clinical psychologist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.



A family friend said Gonzales was seven months pregnant.

In a statement, the Pathway Home said: “These brave women were accomplished professionals who dedicated their careers to serving our nation’s veterans, working closely with those in the greatest need of attention after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Yountville mayor John Dunbar, a member of the Pathway Home’s board of directors, said: “We lost three beautiful people. We also lost one of our heroes who clearly had demons that resulted in the terrible tragedy that we all experienced here.”

Wong served in the army reserve from 1998 to 2002, enlisted for active duty in May 2010 and was deployed to Afghanistan in April 2011, according to military records.



He was awarded the Expert Marksmanship Badge. But that meant that he was tasked with dangerous assignments in which he saw “really horrible things” that affected his mental wellbeing, said Cissy Sherr, his legal guardian when he was a child.

Wong was “soft-spoken and calm”, said Sherr, adding that she and her husband became his guardians after his father died and his mother developed health problems. Wong moved back in with them for a little while in 2013 and kept in touch online. When Wong found the veterans program in Yountville, Sherr said, he told her: “I think I’m going to get a lot of help from this program.”

“I can’t imagine what happened,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”



Authorities offered little information about why Wong attacked the Pathway Home and whether he targeted his victims. But Golick’s father-in-law, Mike Golick, said she had recently expelled Wong from the program. After Wong entered the building, Golick called her husband to say she had been taken hostage, her father-in-law said. He didn’t hear from his wife again.

Dunbar said the program, housed at the Veterans Home of California-Yountville in Napa Valley wine country, had served more than 450 veterans in more than a decade. The largest veterans home in the nation cares for about 1,000 elderly and disabled vets.

The mayor said veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan come home with “a lot of need for special care”. He did not answer questions about why Wong was removed from the program.

Authorities said Wong slipped into a going-away party for employees. He let some people leave but kept the three women. Police said a Napa Valley sheriff’s deputy exchanged gunshots with Wong but nothing was heard from him after that.

On Saturday, from a vet-center crafts building across the street, Sandra Woodford said she saw lawmen with guns but the only shots she heard were inside Pathway.

“This rapid live-fire of rounds going on, at least 12,” she said.

At the veterans home, the Pathway Home was surrounded by crime tape. Muriel Zimmer, an 84-year-old air force veteran of the Korean war, said she felt badly for Wong, saying she “cannot blame him. It’s because of the war.”