https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ive-never-witnessed-something-so-sad-in-my-life-stories-of-the-calif-shooting-victims/2015/12/03/b2a6b492-99f2-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html
National Security
‘I’ve never witnessed something so sad in my life’: Stories of the
Calif. shooting victims
The inside track on Washington politics.
By William Wan and Sandhya Somashekhar December 3 at 8:55 PM
The relatives waited in the gym all day for word of their loved ones.
Every hour or so on Wednesday, a bus would pull up to the community
center, and survivors from the shooting in San Bernardino spilled out
into the open arms of their relieved family.
And with each bus and joyous reunion, the crowd of roughly 100 waiting
relatives grew smaller; until by the end of the night, only 20-some
remained. They sat on bleachers of the indoor gym that authorities had
turned into a command center, and tried to reassure each other that
hope still remained.
What little was left, however, disappeared when an officer approached
the group and announced with solemn regret: There were no more buses
left.
The authorities offered a list of people who had been injured and sent
to hospitals. Then, one by one, they took the relatives who remained
into the community room’s classrooms to break the news.
“They were very caring. They sat each one down in a little circle with
a chaplain and social worker,” said the Rev. Kathleen Dowell, who
spent all day waiting with relatives in the gym. “But I’ve never
witnessed something so sad in my life.”
Among those killed were a woman who had fled Iran to escape Islamic
extremism, a father of six, a man who had recently returned from
retirement to work and the manager of a coffee shop where the shooting
took place — 14 souls in all. After the San Bernardino County medical
examiner’s staff worked all through the night to make official the
grim news, representatives of the county sheriff’s office visited each
of the families in person to formally notify them.
“This shooting has caused each victims family, friends and co-workers,
along with the first responders, to suffer an enormous personal
tragedy. We must stand strong and offer support to each individual
affected by this senseless attack,” stated Sheriff John McMahon.
One of those killed was Bennetta Bet-Badal, 46, who was born in Iran
in 1969 but fled to the United States when she was 18 “to escape
Islamic extremism and the persecution of Christians that followed the
Iranian Revolution,” according to a GoFundMe site set up by her
family.
“It is the ultimate irony,” the site also said, “that her life would
be stolen from her that day by what appears to be the same type of
extremism that she fled so many years ago.”
Betbadal, who holds a degree in chemistry from from the California
Polytechnic State University, worked as an inspector for the San
Bernardino Health Department. On Wednesday, she was excited to give a
presentation to her coworkers and supervisors at their annual meeting,
the site said. “She loved her job, her community, and her country,” it
said. “Her greatest love, however, was for her husband, her children,
and her large extended family.”
She is survived by her husband, Arlen Verdehyou, a police officer, and
three children, ages 10, 12 and 15.
Another who died was Nicholas Thalasinos, 52, who attended Dowell’s
church, Shiloh Messianic Congregation. Fellow churchgoers described
Thalasinos as a big but gentle man with a great passion for his faith.
After the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., on Wednesday that
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He had just emerged from an incredible three-year period in his life,
friends say, during which he converted to the Messianic Jewish
movement of Christianity. He had lost 100 pounds after struggling with
diabetes and recently had a possibly cancerous growth removed.
Most poignantly, however, friends say, he had just renewed his vows
with his wife, Jennifer, in a Jewish-style marriage ceremony after
being married to her for more than a decade, said Olga Fry, the
photographer for the ceremony.
Thalasinos was an environmental health inspector just like the
suspected shooter and had worked with him in the past, Rev. Dowell
said. His Facebook account featured a star of David in its profile
picture, and he frequently posted online about Israel and politics.
Dowell, who spent all Wednesday with Thalosinos’ side, said
authorities at the community center gym asked relatives for
descriptions to help identify the bodies because they needed to be
left undisturbed for investigators.
Dowell said Thalasinos’ wife responded with a wistful smile saying
“He’ll be really easy identify.” Thalasinos had left home that morning
as he almost always did, she said, wearing his signature suspenders.
Another victim killed was Damian Meins, a longtime public servant, had
worked 26 years for Riverside County and retired in 2010, only to come
out of retirement recently for a job with the San Bernardino County
Environmental Health department, according to an e-mail sent to
employees with the employees at his Riverside agency.
He was also a physical education and after-care teacher at St.
Catherine’s School in Riverside, where he was known for playing Santa
each year.
“I will always remember Damian as a caring, jovial man with a warm
smile and a hearty laugh,” Juan Perez, director of the agency, told
the Washington Post in an e-mail. “A bright light has been
extinguished from our world in a most tragic way.
In an interview near the Meins house, a neighbor said Meins was known
to be meticulous about his yard work and hanging lights at Christmas.
He was married and had two daughters. His wife, Trenna, is the
principal of Sacred Heart Parish School in Rancho Cucamonga.
Within hours of his death, friends of Michael Raymond Wetzel had set
up a fundraising site for his bereaved family, which includes six
young children, according to website and a statement posted by his
church.
Both the church and fundraising site show a family photo of the
Wetzels – Michael beaming in a gray sweatshirt, Renee with an infant
girl on her hip, the two of them surrounded by two other young
daughters and three young sons.
He was a supervising environmental health specialist for San
Bernardino County, according to his LinkedIn profile, where he
supervised the county’s land-use protection program.
On the day of the shooting, Wetzel’s wife, Renee wrote that her
husband “was in a meeting and a shooter came in. There are multiple
people dead/shot. I can’t get ahold of him,” according to the
YouCaring.com fundraising site, which as of 3:30 p.m. Eastern time had
raised nearly $42,000.
“Approximately 8 grueling hours later, Renee learned that her husband
Michael Raymond Wetzel had been killed,” wrote those running the
fundraising site.
After 22 hours of rollercoaster emotions and conflicting reports about
his boyfriend’s status, Ryan Reyes told Los Angeles Times that he had
learned definitively that his boyfriend Daniel Kaufman, 42, had been
killed in the shooting.
Kaufman ran the coffee shop at the Inland Regional Center where the
shooting occurred.
Reyes told the Times that they had been together for three years and
had a mutual love of horror movies. He said Kaufman loved talking to
others, sometimes even backing up the line at the grocery store
checkout.
In recent years, Reyes said, Kaufman deliberately avoided getting a
driver’s license, so that he and Reyes could keep riding to and from
work everyday.
Before the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office released names of
all the victims Thursday evening, Abraham Amanios said the extended
family of his brother Isaac Gebreslassie, 60, on Thursday was gathered
in their Fontana home, waiting for dreaded confirmation he had been
killed.
Gebreslassie had left Eritrea to join Amanios in the United States
about 15 years ago, For the last ten of those years, he worked as an
inspector for the county public health department, the brother said.
He and his wife, who is a registered nurse, lived in Fontana,
California about 20 minutes from San Bernardino. There, they raised
three, now adult children.
“Yesterday when this happened to the center, I didn’t even pay
attention until late in the afternoon,” said his brother Amanios, 70.
Now, they fear the worst.
“It’s very unlikely that he survived,” said Abraham. “The thing is
that most of the employees of that department were taken for
examination. I don’t think they would keep them this long.”
Asked whether he believed Isaac had died, Abraham said: “Absolutely.”
They have gone through “the process of denial,” he said. “And then
finally we have to accept.”
The other victims were Shannon Johnson, 45, Aurora Godoy, 26, Larry
Kaufman, 42, Harry Bowman, 46, Yvette Velasco, 27, Sierra Clayborn,
27, Robert Adams, 40, Tin Nguyen, 31, and Juan Espinoza, 50.
Phillip reported from San Bernardino. Alice Crites, Julie Tate,
Stephanie McCrummen and Martha Groves contributed to this report.
William Wan is the Post's roving national correspondent, based in
Washington, D.C. He previously served as the paper’s religion reporter
and diplomatic correspondent and for three years as the Post’s China
correspondent in Beijing.
Received on Thu Dec 03 2015 - 21:35:09 EST