Target of Probes : Hot Temper of Gun Suspect in Air Crash Told

David A. Burke may have been a cool, intelligent and nice guy to his co-workers, friends and neighbors in Los Angeles, but he also had a violent streak and was a frequent target of police investigations--problems that dogged him for years and followed him to California, where he sought a fresh start a year ago.

The ambitious airline worker whom some saw as a civil rights activist unfairly hounded by the Rochester police was also a dangerous man known to carry a gun--and to use it to threaten those closest to him, according to interviews, police and court documents.

Girlfriend’s Report

Just four days before he boarded a San Francisco-bound PSA flight, with the apparent intention of killing a former boss who fired him, Burke pulled a gun on his girlfriend, Jacqueline Camacho. She later told police in Hawthorne, where she lives, that he harassed her and her daughter until daybreak.

A month earlier, on Nov. 10, Camacho--representing herself in Torrance Superior Court--had won a temporary restraining order that barred Burke from coming within 100 yards of her or her home.

Camacho sought the order after Burke twice attempted to strangle her, deliberately damaged her car and tore her clothes in a violent rage, according to court documents.

And just three weeks ago, Burke was fired from his job at USAir for allegedly stealing $69 in liquor receipts.

But in the wake of Monday’s crash, some in Rochester who knew Burke still refused to believe that Burke got on that PSA flight with his mind made up to kill himself and 42 others.

There is no way, they said, that someone so ambitious and so confident would react so madly to the loss of a job.

“I can’t see him hurting somebody over that job,” said Vicki Bennett-Brinson, 36, who had known Burke since he was a 12-year-old newspaper boy in Rochester. “I don’t think he would have become angry enough to kill somebody or kill himself. The David I know could not have done something like that,” she said.

Started as Skycap

And yet, these same friends say that Burke was known to carry a gun in Rochester, even while climbing the corporate ladder at USAir, where he started as a skycap 15 years ago and worked his way up to customer service representative.

“He stayed in his hometown,” said high school friend James McGowan. “He mixed with all the people he grew up with, the hoodlums and the executives.”

Friends said he was not openly violent, but was also not the kind to turn the other cheek. “You start it, he’ll finish it,” said Bennett-Brinson.

The Rochester Police Department said the only criminal record Burke had was a 1984 petty larceny conviction that stemmed from a shoplifting incident.

But former Rochester neighbor Al Nitto said police were occasionally called to Burke’s home to investigate alleged domestic disputes. He said Burke once “blew out all the windows in his garage door” during such a spat.

In 1984 and 1985, Burke was investigated as a major link in a narcotics trafficking operation at the Greater Rochester International Airport, where he worked from 1972 to 1986, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

The probe ended with more than 50 arrests and led to several convictions, but Burke was never charged.

Dale Anderson, a special agent in charge of the FBI’s Rochester office, said Burke had been targeted in several local narcotics investigations.

Rochester police investigated him three separate times for suspected drug smuggling.

“We have no evidence to prove he was involved in drugs . . . at least no evidence that would have led to a conviction,” said Rochester Police Chief Gordon Erlacher.

The last Rochester police investigation stopped when Burke left town in late 1986, said Erlacher.

One FBI investigation that is still pending here involved the theft and retitling of several dozen luxury cars. Agency officials said Wednesday that Burke was a suspect in that case.

Though he maintained his innocence, Burke worried that the investigations created a cloud over him, according to friends.

Packages of Cocaine

In one such case, Rochester police received a tip that Burke was receiving packages at the airport containing cocaine. The department obtained a search warrant but turned up nothing.

Still, friends recall, Burke suffered the embarrassment of being handcuffed and led away by police while on the job.

It was against this background that Burke moved to California looking for a new beginning.

Burke’s personal life was just as mixed as his career. Friends said he fathered 11 children with six women, but prided himself on taking care of all of them. In particular, friends said, he loved his daughter Sabrina, 13, and brought her to California with him.

His affection for his children is one reason friends in Rochester found his apparent suicide so hard to understand.

“David would never have left his daughter out there hanging,” said Terry Stith-Meyer, 34, who grew up with Burke in the middle-class southwest Rochester neighborhood. “This guy always took care of his babies,” said Stith-Meyer.

Owned Duplex

Friends said Burke owned a duplex in Rochester. In one of the units lived one of his girlfriends and four of his children and in the other lived the family of his deceased younger brother, Joseph, the victim of a drug overdose.

Deborah Stith-Meyer, another childhood friend, said, “He wanted what most people hope to have: to leave something for his kids. He knew he had to be strong to get what he needed for his kids and was willing to work for what he wanted.”

On the other hand, she said, Burke wanted to move to California in part to escape his “girl problems.”

She said Burke once told her, “I’m tired of all this. I’m getting older. I want to settle down. I want to get away from the pressures and headaches here.”

Called a Hard Worker

Stith-Meyer, McGowan and others said Burke was always a hard worker. In high school he was the guy who always had a job. Later, he got a real estate license. And he did landscaping and, in the winter, plowed snow from driveways for a fee.

Burke told friends that he hoped to get ahead with USAir by getting away from his police problems in Rochester.

In one telephone call from Long Beach, Burke told Deborah Stith-Meyer that he was adjusting well to life in California but was finding the job stifling. When he made recommendations at work, he told her, “They say, ‘Just do your job,’ ” Stith-Meyer recalled.

On July 15, Burke appeared at the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing in Los Angeles to complain that he had twice been passed over for a $43,000-a-year job as customer service supervisor, the same job that he had in Rochester.

“He questioned whether it was because of race,” said Carol Schiller, Los Angeles regional administrator of the agency. But after telling his story to an investigator, Burke never returned to press his complaint.

Phillip Dixon reported from Rochester and Frederick M. Muir reported from Los Angeles.