Goleta postal facility shootings
San Marco, a former United States Postal Service employee, shot and killed six people in Goleta, California, before taking her own life.
On January 30, 2006, Jennifer San Marco drove to her former condominium in Santa Barbara, California, and killed Beverly Graham, a former neighbor with whom she had previously argued, with a shot to the head.
San Marco entered the building (which had around eighty employees inside at the time) and shot supervisor Charlotte Colton in the head,[5] who was then dragged into a room by a co-worker.
Dexter Shannon, a Vietnam War veteran with grandchildren, heard nothing of the gunshots as he was working with headphones on; he was fatally shot at point-blank range.
Goleta's mayor, Jonny Wallis, held a news conference in which she praised the police response, condemned the shooting, and offered her condolences to its victims.
In the small town, San Marco earned a reputation for strange behavior, which included speaking (or sometimes furiously shouting) to herself, ordering food at restaurants and bolting out the door before eating it, stripping naked in public (often in random parking lots), kneeling and praying in random places (often at roadsides), talking to an imaginary friend, screaming death threats, yelling profane rap lyrics and making racist comments.
[10] At one point, she claimed she wanted to register a cat food business and was rejected because she lived in an unincorporated area of Cibola County.
In November, a mental health clinic manager named Darlene Hayes reported seeing San Marco alone in a post office parking lot kneeling at her car and talking to herself.
A man who delivered propane gas to San Marco and described her as polite, noted that she always paid her bills on time, though he had noticed her talking to an "imaginary friend.
"[11] San Marco was apparently convinced that she was the target of a nefarious conspiracy centered at the Goleta postal facility, according to writings recovered from her home in New Mexico.
A spokesman for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office conjectured that San Marco's paranoia and history of mental illness may have motivated her to commit the murders.
[13] Among San Marco's writings were error-laden explanations of various religions and a theory linking the U.S. government to serial killer David Berkowitz, the Ku Klux Klan and racist murders.
An auto body worker once said that San Marco claimed that the Postal Service mistreated her, but that she never said anything violent or talked about murder, but that they had to "pay", which may have indicated revenge as another possible motive.
