A week after the surreal, murderous assault at the La Jolla Crossroads apartments, it’s difficult to assemble the pieces and solve the puzzle.

What motivated Peter Selis’ lethal outburst of April 30?

The pictures are clear, yet confusing:

Video shows Selis, a middle-aged white man sitting on a chaise lounge by a pool, a beer at his side and a gun in his hand.


It’s an eerie scene, in part because Selis will be dead within minutes, killed in an exchange of gunfire with three San Diego police officers.

Also chilling are Selis’ calm, methodical actions. Aim, fire, reload, repeat. He looks unmoved as guests at a birthday party scream and try to run for safety. For much of the rampage, he was on his cellphone — police say he was talking to an ex-girlfriend, forcing her to listen to the shots and cries.

Five of the seven people he wounded are African-Americans, including the one fatality, a 35-year-old mother of three daughters, Monique Clark. One victim is Latino, while another is white.

That’s another piece of the puzzle. Was this the deadly outburst of an unhinged racist? Was this a hate crime?


“I feel there was hate within this crime, and I don’t think that is a deniable thing here,” said Navy Lt. j.g. Lauren Chapman, an African-American who was a guest at the party.

Most of the guests were minorities, Chapman noted, and some white partygoers were treated differently by the shooter.

“Our one friend, who happens to be blond hair and blue-eyed, bent down to help the young lady that we lost, and the gunman said, ‘Don’t you touch her. Don’t you help her,’” Chapman said.

Selis, Chapman added, then told the blond woman “you can either (leave) or you can die here.”


“Obviously I can’t make sense of what exactly that means,” Chapman said, “but it is really hard to not look at that and feel like it was a directed attack for us.”

San Diego police say it may be weeks before they can examine Selis’ cellphone and computer. First, they have to obtain search warrants. So far, they say, they’ve found no evidence linking the gunman to hate groups or racist ideologies.

Friends, colleagues, a former coach — all insist this was not the man they knew.

“I can’t wrap my mind around why Pete would do this,” said Tom Tulloch, a boyhood friend. “He was such a nice guy and had such a good demeanor.”


Selis told the occasional racist joke, Tulloch said, but he never thought of Pete as a racist. “His thoughts and his actions never suggested that,” said Tulloch, who is white.

Drew Phillips, an African-American and a guest at the birthday party, knew Selis when both worked for Mossy Ford near East Mission Bay in 2012.

“He was an average person, a laid-back guy with a good sense of humor,” Phillips said.

Did he ever sense racial hostility from his white co-worker?


“Nah,” Phillips said. “But that was a long time ago. A lot can change.”

I feel there was hate within this crime, and I don’t think that is a deniable thing here. Navy Lt. j.g. Lauren Chapman, who witnessed the shooting

And a lot can be hidden from view. While some recall a friendly and carefree man, others knew that Selis was buckling under emotional and financial pressures. People who knew him said he had issues with alcohol.

He was broke, divorced from his first wife, estranged from his second wife. Police say a girlfriend broke up with him last month.


Since February, he also had been dogged by threats of arrest and prosecution for failing to pay $3,542.58 to Snap-on Credit, said Steven Houbeck, his Encinitas-based bankruptcy lawyer.

“He was freaking out,” Houbeck said. “When you’re just an average working stiff and you get letters like this, it scares the hell out of you.”

‘Hollywood’

One of eight siblings, Peter Raymond Selis was born on Sept. 20, 1967, in San Diego.

Friends say he was close to his father, the late Dr. Robert Selis, who spent 49 years practicing dentistry in San Diego.


Growing up in Allied Gardens, he developed an interest in cars and a freewheeling style as a baseball player. Pete Cavaghan, who coached the 13-year-old Selis in 1981 for the Allied Gardens-Del Cerro Senior League, remembers that teammates on the Giants nicknamed their left fielder “Hollywood.”

“He was just an entertainer,” Cavaghan said. “In the outfield, he would dive for balls — even if he was going to miss them by five feet.”

Selis played only a single season for Cavaghan, but he left an impression.

“I loved Hollywood,” said Cavaghan, now a high school teacher in Northern California. “You just couldn’t not love him.”


After graduating from Patrick Henry High School in 1986, Selis worked as a mechanic. He loved cars — and flashy “Hollywood”-style gestures. Tulloch recalls a day when his friend appeared in a limousine “borrowed” from an employer.

“This is our baby for the weekend!” Selis said.

Selis, Tulloch and other friends tossed back a few drinks, then cruised through La Jolla in the limo. While taking advantage of the limo’s bar, they took turns as the designated driver. They drew a crowd and told gawkers that they had won the lottery.

“He always loved to work on cars,” Tulloch said. “He just gets all lit up when he talked about it. He had a gift.”


There are long gaps in Selis’ biography — family members have declined requests for interviews — but court records show he married Michelle Filipoff on Oct. 4, 1997.

Three months later, he was sued for child support for a son from a previous relationship, according to court records.

Michelle and Peter’s first daughter was born in 1999. That year, they moved into a home on a cul-de-sac in suburban Poway. Another daughter arrived in 2003.

In their child friendly neighborhood many front porches house a bike, a skateboard, a boogie board or all three. Residents on this block remember Selis as a devoted father.


The marriage, though, ended in divorce in October 2008.

Pages of red ink

In 2008, Selis reported in court records an annual salary of $135,501. He didn’t say what his occupation was.

In December 2009, he declared bankruptcy. He was $6,300 behind on his state income taxes and had credit card balances of nearly $50,000. Worse, the short sale of an investment property in Temecula left him owing nearly $96,000.

He had a modest 401(k) — just over $1,000 — and $1,860 in his checking account. Working as a mechanic for Mossy Ford, his income had dropped to $69,000.


Selis was granted a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which forgave all unsecured non-priority claims. This proved to be a temporary reprieve.

By 2015, he filed for bankruptcy again. A Chapter 13 bankruptcy, this one legally forestalled creditors while Selis and his lawyer, Houbeck, crafted a repayment plan.

The list of his creditors extended for eight pages. The red ink included state and federal taxes in excess of $10,000; bills from hospitals and clinics totaling more than $19,000; and credit card balances of more than $12,000.

This was a man who was under an incredible amount of financial pressure. Steven Houbeck, bankruptcy lawyer for Peter Selis


One debt seemed to lead to another. In April 2014, he borrowed from the Lending Club, a San Francisco corporation. In January 2015, he secured another loan from the online lender.

By August 2015, he had stopped paying on the loans and owed Lending Club $14,201.

He had also borrowed $24,920 to buy Snap-on tools.

“He needed these tools for his job,” Houbeck said.


The lawyer remembers that his client seemed tense, on edge. Selis had married Patricia Martinez in 2013; she and her son moved in with Selis, sharing an apartment at La Jolla Crossroads in University City.

When Selis came to see Houbeck, though, the couple had agreed to separate — but at that time they were still sharing the apartment.

“He was really stressed out,” Houbeck said. “He had all these payments and he told me he had all these mouths to feed.”

Selis thought he had a workable payment plan. But in February he received a letter from an Orlando, Fla., collection agency, The Collins Group.


“Please be advised that a complaint of theft by conversion has been prepared and will be filed against you with the office of state attorney with regard to the above referenced matter,” the letter began.

“If you wish to avoid arrest and prosecution the balance in full must be paid on an immediate basis.”

The letter referenced $3,542.58 owed to Snap-on Credit. Snap-on didn’t return a call to the Union-Tribune for comment.

Houbeck assured Selis that his Chapter 13 bankruptcy shielded him from creditors. But then Selis started getting calls at home, dunning him for the money.


“This was a man who was under an incredible amount of financial pressure,” Houbeck said.

“He was always professional, but there was always a lot of tension in him.”

Then the lawyer echoed the comments of friends and colleagues: “I had no idea he would harm people.”

Staff writer Pauline Repard and librarian Merrie Monteagudo contributed to this report.