Police: Shooting deaths in Santa Rosa murder‑suicide involved longtime married couple

“We answer thousands of calls every year for people seeking our services,” said Madeleine Keegan O’Connell, CEO of YWCA Sonoma County. “But we also want to talk to you if you suspect someone in your life could use our advocacy.

Victims of domestic violence can call the local YWCA’s 24/7 crisis hotline at 707-546-1234 for help. The YWCA also offers domestic violence therapy and operates a safe house for victims and a therapeutic preschool program.

Paula Zamora's family has set up a GoFundMe. If you'd like to make a donation, click here.

Upset about the end of his 27-year marriage, a Santa Rosa man ambushed and killed his wife Monday morning as she sat in her SUV in a Coddingtown Mall parking lot, then drove away and killed himself outside his apartment, police said.

The couple, who had four children, had recently split and were living separately in Santa Rosa, police said. The man, Tomas Zamora-Martinez, 52, wanted to reunite and his wife, Paula Zamora, 43, wanted to divorce, investigators said.

“It was a targeted act of tragic domestic violence in the shopping center,” Santa Rosa police Lt. John Cregan said.

The shocking attack stunned onlookers who witnessed the 8:30 a.m. killing outside the Crunch Fitness gym, located in the southwest parking lot of the Santa Rosa shopping center. Police said Zamora-Martinez was waiting for his estranged wife outside the gym, where she frequently worked out, and confronted her as she attempted to park her SUV.

The man walked up to his wife’s car, raised a handgun and began shooting through the window of her white Chevrolet Tahoe.

“I’m driving along near the post office and hear this ‘pop pop.’ I looked over to my right and there is a guy shooting into this SUV,” said Steve Bruno, a Sonoma man who had just arrived to conduct business in the area.

“He’s shooting and the car starts to roll and he walks alongside it, points his gun right into the driver’s side window and shoots again,” Bruno said, realizing “He was killing her.”

The woman was hit at least twice, police said. The shots blew out the front passenger window of her SUV. One stray bullet hit a side mirror of another car parked nearby.

The wounded woman’s SUV was still in gear and rolled forward, striking an unoccupied green sedan parked near Crunch Fitness. Police officers found Zamora belted into her seat. She was taken by ambulance to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, where she was declared dead.

No bystanders were wounded.

The man drove a couple blocks to Herbert Street, where he had been living in an apartment complex, Cregan said. He parked his Jeep and shot himself in the head, police said. Callers reported the second shooting at 9:06 a.m. and officers found him dead inside the car, with a semi‑automatic handgun in his lap.

The gun, which had been reported stolen in Las Vegas, was not registered to Zamora-Martinez, police said.

Detectives were looking into whether there had been any previous reports of domestic violence involving the couple. They had been married nearly three decades and had four children. Two of the couple’s four children are in college, one is in high school and one in elementary school, Cregan said. The two younger students attended Santa Rosa schools, where counselors were dispatched to help, said Beth Berk, a spokeswoman for Santa Rosa City Schools.

“We are saddened by the shooting in the Coddingtown area today. We can confirm police let us know this morning that this involved the family of two students in our district,” Berk said. “Our hearts go out to those students and this family.”

Monday’s shooting was a reminder of the “gruesome reality” that domestic violence affects about one out of four families, said Madeleine Keegan O’Connell, CEO of YWCA Sonoma County.