Man Surrenders After Five Shot to Death at Home in El Cajon

A man who called police and said, “I just murdered my family” was arrested Saturday outside his Fletcher Hills home after officers persuaded him to surrender. Inside the house, authorities found the bodies of five people who had been shot to death, police said.

The suspected killer, identified as Tufic (Tom) Badih Naddi, surrendered without a struggle in the driveway of his home at 6:02 p.m., police said. He was wearing pajamas and holding his hands over his head. The suspect is believed to have shot to death his wife, her parents and brother, and a male friend of the brother.

“There were some in the bedrooms, some in the living room and some in the dining room,” said Lt. Bob Moreau of the El Cajon police. “Some were shot in the head, some in the torso.”

The motive behind the slayings was not immediately known, Moreau said.

Naddi’s 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, who were playing in the driveway of the house when police converged to make the arrest, were not harmed.

“I saw a policeman with a rifle crouched behind that car down the street,” said Robert Daynes, the Naddis’ next-door neighbor. “I called the children off the street and into the house.”

Authorities did not immediately identify the victims, but said three were male and two were female. Police entered the house at 8:45 p.m. with a search warrant.

Daynes said he believed that, in addition to Naddi’s wife, Ida, the victims included Ida’s parents, Habib and Lillian Sabbagh, who own the house at 677 Carlow Way. The names of the Sabbaghs’ son and the son’s friend were not known.

Neighbors described the family as very outgoing and friendly, and said they had given no outward signs of domestic problems.

Tom Naddi, 44, “was always very friendly. He always seemed to be a very kind person,” Daynes said. “He was always polite, easygoing. He seemed to be more Western than the rest of them.”

The Naddis shared the yellow stucco four-bedroom house with Ida’s parents.

Neighbors said the house is owned by the Sabbaghs but the Naddis had lived there year-round for about four years. The Sabbaghs, a “well-to-do” retired couple who had owned a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Jordan, traveled regularly between the United States and Jordan. They had returned unexpectedly Friday night with their son and his friend, Daynes said.

“They never lacked for money,” said Karen Christiansen, another neighbor. “They loved to go to Chuck E. Cheese (a pizza parlor) . . . They were constantly buying toys for the kids.”

Christiansen said that the family had spent much of their time in recent weeks using a swimming pool and Jacuzzi that were recently installed in the backyard.

Ida Naddi was described by Christiansen as “very soft-spoken, very pleasant, always smiling. And she was always very unsure of her English.”

“They were marvelous people,” said Daynes. “I’m totally dumbfounded. I have no idea what happened. There was no previous indication that something like this was going to happen.”

El Cajon police said they received a phone call about 5:30 p.m. from a man who identified himself as “Tom.” “I just murdered my family,” the man told Officer Rich Day.

Day kept the man on the phone until police could arrive at the house, and he persuaded the man to disarm himself and surrender.

Neighbors in this hilly, middle-class area said they did not hear any gunshots.

After officers entered the house and found the victims, a Life Flight ambulance helicopter was immediately dispatched because one of the victims was still alive. But the helicopter never landed at the scene. Before it could arrive, police told dispatchers that the victim had died.

Daynes said he was especially close to the Sabbaghs.

“Every few days we’d see them. We spent many hours with them,” he said. “They’d often invite us over. The Middle East custom would be to sit around shish-ka-bob to talk and eat.”

“Especially being from another country, they were never bashful about inviting you over,” Christiansen said.

Habib Sabbagh had become known in the neighborhood for his Old World ways.

Christiansen said Sabbagh was so grateful to a woman who had invited the family to pick lemons from her tree that he took her by the arm one day, brought her to his house, and presented her with a red dress as a gift.

Christiansen said her daughter often played with the Naddi children. She said Habib Sabbagh was very proud of his granddaughter’s naturally curly hair and had offered to pay for Christiansen’s daughter to have a permanent. Christiansen said she declined the offer.

Times staff writer Scott Harris contributed to this story.