[1][6][7] There were about twenty people in the salon at the time, some managing to escape by running into the street or hiding in neighboring businesses.

[10] Police later named the weapons used in the shooting as a 9mm Springfield, a .45-caliber Heckler & Koch, and a .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 29.

[11] The suspect in the shooting, named by police as 41-year-old[12] Scott Evans Dekraai of Huntington Beach, California, was arrested without incident after being stopped while driving a white pickup truck about one half-mile (0.8 km) from the scene of the crime.

[14] The incident was the worst mass murder in Orange County, surpassing the Fullerton massacre in July 1976, in which seven people died.

A court hearing had taken place on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, the day before the shooting, which recommended a near-equal custody arrangement.

He then walked out of the salon and shot a ninth victim, a man, who was sitting nearby in a parked Range Rover.

He also said that David Caouette – an apparently random victim sitting in his parked car outside the salon – had been shot because he thought that he was "an off-duty or undercover police officer".

[41] The start date for the trial, originally scheduled for March 25, 2013, was postponed until November 2013 to allow defense attorneys to review recordings obtained by a prison informant.

[48][49] In August 2017, Goethals ruled that Dekraai was ineligible to receive the death penalty due to the purported prosecutorial misconduct in the case.