On January 30, 2006, a mass shooting took place at a United States Postal Service facility in Goleta, California. Six people were killed before the perpetrator, former employee Jennifer San Marco, committed suicide. Prior to the Goleta shooting, San Marco shot and killed her former neighbor in Santa Barbara.
On the morning of January 30, 2006, Jennifer San Marco arrived in Los Angeles after boarding a flight from New Mexico. She made a two-hour drive to Santa Barbara, where San Marco gained entry into her former residence at an apartment complex and broke into the condominium of Beverly Graham, a former neighbor who frequently argued with San Marco over loud noise. After scaling a fence and entering Graham's condominium through an unlocked sliding glass door, San Marco killed Graham with two gunshots to the head. Neighbors placed the killing between 7:15 p.m. and 8:15 p.m.
Via U.S. Route 101, San Marco traveled five miles to the Goleta Processing and Distribution Center. San Marco entered the sprawling plant's lot by tailgating another car as it passed through the gate. She took an employee's identification badge at gunpoint in order to gain electronic access to the building through the secure staff entrance. She then told the employee to leave; the worker was physically unharmed.
At 9:00 p.m., in the building's parking lot, San Marco shot and killed Maleka Pineda and Ze Fairchild. Both were killed with single gunshots to the head. Outside the facility entrance, she killed Nicola Grant with two gunshots to the head and chest. The gunshots were likely not heard due to most employees wearing ear protection and further muted by the interior sound of heavy machinery. Around eighty employees were inside the facility at the time of the shooting.
San Marco entered the building and shot supervisor Charlotte Colton in the head, who was then dragged into a room by a co-worker. Colton would die two days later in Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. In the annex, San Marco approached two employees and aimed her gun at them at point-blank range, but did not fire. She then headed to her former work station and encountered Guadalupe Swartz, who saw her coming and tried to flee. San Marco, however, rapidly fired four shots into Swartz, killing her. 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. San Marco then killed herself by shooting herself in the head. The shooting lasted less than two minutes.
Over one hundred officers of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department, California Highway Patrol and Santa Barbara Police Department evacuated the remaining employees from the building, holding most at a nearby fire station while a SWAT unit searched the building.
Initially, it was reported that there were three dead and one wounded. Two victims were recovered alive, but one died the same day while the other died two days later at a hospital. Including the shooting in Santa Barbara, six women and one man were killed. With the exception of Graham, who was white, all six of the dead in Goleta had a minority background: Grant, Pineda, and Shannon were Black, Swartz was Hispanic, Colton was Filipino, and Fairchild was Hmong Laotian. Of them, three were residents of Santa Barbara, two were from Lompoc, and one was from Oxnard. The six workers were employed for the US Postal Service for between 36 and 10 years.
Maleka Brinley-Higgins Pineda, 28
Immediately after the shooting, police stated the perpetrator was a female ex-employee of the postal facility, but did not release any other information. The day after the shooting, police publicly identified the perpetrator as 44-year-old Jennifer San Marco, a resident of Grants, New Mexico, though initially misspelling the last name as "Sanmarco". San Marco was employed at the postal facility between 1997 and 2003. San Marco was recognised on site by other employees, albeit with a noticeably shorter "crew-cut" hairstyle. She had purchased the murder weapon, a second-hand Smith & Wesson Model 915 at a pawn shop in Grants in August 2005, buying 15 rounds of ammunition separately at another pawn shop in Gallup.
San Marco was born on December 6, 1961 in Brooklyn, New York. She went to Edward R. Murrow High School and later attended Brooklyn College and Rutgers University for two years, studying natural resources management at the latter, but without graduating.
Between 1990 and 1993, San Marco was employed as a correctional officer at California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. She quit her job and worked as a hotel clerk in Eatontown, New Jersey between April and October 1994 before returning to California, taking a job as a residential counselor at a group home in Santa Barbara. San Marco again became a correctional officer and worked at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe, resigning after two years citing a "change of career goals" In 1994, San Marco was hired by the Santa Barbara Police Department as a dispatcher, for which she underwent a background check and psychological evaluation. She left the job after several months. San Marco became employed for the US Postal Service as a part-time night shift clerk in August 1997, buying a condominium in Santa Barbara the same year. Between 1998 and 2000, she also worked as a food service assistant for the Santa Barbara Unified School District.
Mental health and work dismissal
According to co-workers, San Marco's behavior became "increasingly more bizarre" and she was prone to making racist remarks and acting hostile towards Asian people, though she never issued any direct threats. Since her employment at the postal facility, she had kept records on her co-workers, detailing perceived slights and offenses, specifically mentioning Ze Fairchild and Dexter Shannon, writing that the former was "making [her] very uncomfortable". On February 5, 2001, San Marco was removed from the postal facility by police after her supervisor reported that she voiced suicidal thoughts while displaying "erratic and aberrant behavior" and placed on a 72 hour involuntary mental health hold at Vista Del Mar Hospital in Ventura. On March 12, the US Postal Service ordered San Marco to undergo a psychological evaluation and placed her on unpaid leave for 21 days.
Throughout 2002, San Marco wrote several letters to government officials, including Assistant Director in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Los Angeles Field Office Ronald L. Iden and California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, accusing the US Postal Service, various municipal and law enforcement agencies, and the federal government of harassment and discrimination against her. Among other complaints, she alleged that her workplace at the postal facility subjected her to a "hierarchical racist/sexist form of discriminatory mandate" and that the postal service was stalking and verbally assaulting her outside of work, in coordination with the city of Santa Barbara, claiming its "German and/or Dutch" culture was targeting her as an Italian-American. In June 2003, San Marco was escorted out of the postal facility by police in handcuffs due to concerns of potential self-harm after an incident in which San Marco ended up under a mail-sorting machine. San Marco was initially returned to work after some months, but again forcibly removed by security due to complaints over her erratic behavior and racist comments. She was placed on medical leave and given early retirement on grounds of mental disability.
In 2004, San Marco attempted to drive across the United States in order to move in with relatives on the East Coast, but her car broke down in Milan, New Mexico, settling down in nearby Grants. San Marco earned a reputation for strange behavior, such as talking to an imaginary friend or ordering food at restaurants only to run out before eating. San Marco was known to frequently harass members of the local municipal office after she was denied a license to start a cat food business. She most often targeted one employee, Sonya Salazar, coming into the office only to stare at Salazar, to the point where other employees told her to hide upon San Marco's arrival. San Marco would usually leave abruptly, talking to herself and gesticulating before entering her car and driving back and forth in front of the office. In one instance, San Marco once accused Salazar of sleeping with someone; authorities were called and she ceased her visits. She also came into contact with authorities in Grants after she appeared naked at a gas station. She was clothed when the officers arrived and they ultimately let her off with a warning.