STOCKTON - An apparent murder-suicide Monday that left four dead and partly played out in an upscale retirement home capped three days of violence in Stockton, surpassing the city's all-time homicide record set last year.
In all, nine people died violent deaths in a span of 51 hours beginning Saturday, bringing Stockton to a grim record of 59 homicides. There were 58 in all of 2011.
The string of killings began with the brazen lunchtime shooting of a man outside a fast-food restaurant Saturday. Two other fatal shootings followed late Saturday and early Sunday. Add that to Monday's violence, and police were investigating eight new homicides.
How to help
As concern about Stockton crime has grown, so have the Stockton Police Department's efforts in soliciting help from the community.
People with information about homicides can call the Investigations Division at (209) 937-8323 or Crime Stoppers at (209) 946-0600. Callers can remain anonymous.
People can send a text message from their cellphones to CRIMES (274637) by providing the tip after typing in the keyword TIPSPD. People also can submit a tip on the Stockton Police Department's Facebook page.
"I've never seen this many homicides in such a short time span," said Officer Joe Silva, a spokesman for the Stockton Police Department. "Our detectives have worked around the clock since Saturday."
Investigators believe the murder-suicide began at 3:06 p.m. in the 400 block of North Regent Street, a few blocks from University of the Pacific, where officers found a 64-year-old women shot dead in her home.
Witnesses saw a white man leave in a silver minivan, which officers spotted minutes later parked at O'Connor Woods Senior Living, an upscale retirement home six miles north in the 3500 block of Wagner Heights Road.
Inside a room, officers found two people dead from gunshot injuries - an 88-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man, who is the suspected gunman.
Officers found a woman wrapped in a blue tarp in the back of the minivan. Firefighters tried to resuscitate her for several minutes with chest compressions before finally covering her with a yellow tarp and stepping back.
Police Chief Eric Jones arrived at the retirement home and joined a swarm of homicide detectives and uniformed officers behind the yellow crime scene tape.
Police brought in the department's large mobile command center, preparing to work the scene through the night. Worried relatives asked through the fence if their loved ones were OK, and employees had trouble getting inside.
Ron Cutler, who lives across the street, said he was in disbelief. His grandfather had lived at O'Connor Woods, a heavily wooded complex of elderly homes for residents with varying degrees of independence.
"I get the shakes when I see this kind of stuff in Stockton," Cutler said. "This is not what this town is about."
North Regent Street, where the first victim was found, is a tree-lined street right off Pacific Avenue, where residents say they know each other well, have a strong Neighborhood Watch program and enjoy walking to the nearby Miracle Mile.
Neighbors said the house where the woman was found was the home of a woman they knew as Cathy, who lived there on her own.
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