All 3 hostages, gunman dead at Yountville veterans home

Law enforcement personnel move towards the scene where an active shooter has taken hostages at the Veteran Administration Hospital in Yountville, California on Friday, March 09, 2018. Law enforcement personnel move towards the scene where an active shooter has taken hostages at the Veteran Administration Hospital in Yountville, California on Friday, March 09, 2018. Photo: JOSH EDELSON, JOSH EDELSON / SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Photo: JOSH EDELSON, JOSH EDELSON / SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Image 1 of / 28 Caption Close All 3 hostages, gunman dead at Yountville veterans home 1 / 28 Back to Gallery

A military veteran who had been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder burst into a veterans home in the North Bay town of Yountville on Friday with a rifle, killed three women connected with the treatment program and then killed himself, authorities and program officials said.

Law enforcement officers found the bodies of the victims and the killer at the Veterans Home of California-Yountville shortly before 6 p.m., more than seven hours after the incident began, said Chris Childs, an assistant chief of the California Highway Patrol.

Authorities had earlier said the gunman was holding staff members of the Pathway Home, a program on the Veterans Home campus that had been treating him for PTSD until he was asked to leave several days ago.

One of those killed was the program’s executive director, Christine Loeber, the Pathway Home said in a statement. Also killed were Dr. Jen Golick, a therapist with the program, and Dr. Jennifer Gonzales, a psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs in San Francisco, the statement said.

The CHP did not release the killer’s name, but a knowledgeable source identified him as Albert Wong. The source said he and the three victims were shot to death.

The tragedy began around 10:30 a.m. when the gunman walked into a staff meeting of Pathway Home, a program that treats combat veterans for PTSD. State Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, whose district includes the center, said the man had been asked to leave several days ago, for unknown reasons.

The gunman exchanged fire with a Napa County sheriff’s deputy, whom Childs credited with preventing the killer from “finding other victims.” The deputy was unharmed.

Some witnesses said 20 or more shots were fired. The gunman took the three women hostage, along with two additional unidentified people whom he released a short time later.

The gunman then barricaded himself with the hostages inside a room in one of the buildings on the 9,000-acre Veterans Home campus, located about 10 miles north of Napa. It was there that authorities found the bodies of the victims and killer just before 6 p.m. It was not immediately known when they died.

The discovery came after fruitless hours of trying to contact the man, said Napa County Sheriff John Robertson.

“We do know who he is,” Robertson said at an afternoon news conference. “We’ve been trying to contact him by his own cell phone and phones in the (Veterans Home) dormitory.”

Childs said the killer’s phone was found inside his parked rental car near the site of the hostage taking. Authorities checked the car for explosives after a bomb-sniffing police dog signaled that they may be present. None was found.

Dodd said the killer was a war veteran who had entered the Pathway Home program last year.

The Pathway Home has focused in recent years on post-9/11 veterans from California, many of whom transition to higher education to pursue studies at Napa Valley College, Santa Rosa Junior College and elsewhere. It was a setting of the 2017 fictional movie “Thank You for Your Service,” about a Marine platoon leader with PTSD.

Loeber, 48, a social worker with her master’s from Boston College, worked at Department of Veterans Affairs clinics in San Francisco and Menlo Park before coming to the Pathway Home.

In an interview with The Chronicle when the movie came out, Loeber said, “When these people are in combat, their systems are programmed to keep them alive under incredibly stressful situations. Nobody helps them understand that when they get back they have to reprogram their nervous system to operate at a different caliber so they can be successful civilians.”

According to her Linked In page, Golick was clinical director at the Pathway Home. She described herself as a licensed marriage family therapist with more than 16 years of clinical practice.

Loeber, Golick and Gonzales were “brave women (and) 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,” the Pathway Home said in its statement.

President Trump offered his condolences early Saturday. “We are deeply saddened by the tragic situation in Yountville and mourn the loss of three incredible women who cared for our Veterans,” he said in a tweet.

According to radio transmissions between officers at the scene and dispatchers, the man who burst into the Pathway Home on Friday was a 36-year-old veteran wearing “a stash of bullets around his neck” and his waist.

Larry Kamer’s wife, Devereaux Smith, is a development director for the Pathway Home. She was among those present at the staff meeting, which also included a going-away party for departing employees, when the gunman entered.

Smith was able to escape before he opened fire, Kamer said.

“She’s obviously quite shaken up,” he said. “Just imagine, you’re at a normal workday gathering and a man walks in with a rifle, and he’s ex-military. It’s very scary.”

Hostage negotiators from the Napa County Sheriff’s Department, city of Napa Police Department and the FBI tried all day to contact the gunman, Childs said.

Much of the Veterans Home was locked down for the day. About 80 schoolchildren rehearsing a play in a theater some distance from where the gunman was holed up were whisked away in a bus to safety.

Friends and relatives of residents and employees waited anxiously at the entrance to the property, some distance away from the main buildings. After the initial gunfire, Fernando Juarez, 36, of Napa, began exchanging text messages with his sister, Hirma Vanessa Flores, a 22-year-old caregiver who works inside. Her texts said she was unharmed and that “all she can hear is yelling,” Juarez said

As of late last year, some 850 people lived at the Veterans Home. The center is across the street from the Napa Valley Museum in Yountville on California Drive and is more than 133 years old.