Community Mourns Four Slain at Fitness Club : Violence: Employees and members bring flowers and condolence messages to site. Authorities try to find out why the gunman went on a rampage before he killed himself.

Scores of mourners descended upon a San Diego-area fitness center Friday, grieving over the four people gunned down by a weightlifter said to be depressed because of a knee injury.

“This is home for many of us, a place to meet, to relax and to get rid of the daily stress,” said Terrill Caw, 36, a financial planner and a regular at the Family Fitness Center. “We feel like we’ve been raped in our own home.”

Nineteen-year-old James M. Buquet killed three women and a man at the fitness club Thursday, before killing himself. Police said Buquet bought the single-barrel, 12-gauge shotgun used in the rampage Sept. 24 at a pawnshop in El Cajon and got the weapon Monday, after the required 15-day wait.

Authorities said they were searching for clues to what may have motivated Buquet. They are investigating a report from one of Buquet’s former college classmates that he wrote a short story for a class about a gunman who shot up a restaurant and then killed himself.

On Friday, members of the Family Fitness Center streamed by the site of the killings, bringing flowers, condolence messages and rosary beads. Some brought their children; some sat in their cars and prayed.

As many in this city of 91,000, 15 miles east of downtown San Diego, pondered the why of Thursday’s slayings, the killer’s rage underscored the point that no place is safe from violence.

“It reaffirms the reality that nothing is sacred anymore and every sanctuary in America is now suspect,” said psychologist Michael Mantell, who counseled survivors of the 1984 McDonald’s massacre in which a gunman killed 21 people in a fast-food restaurant in the San Diego neighborhood of San Ysidro.

“If you can’t go to a McDonald’s and you can’t buy a stamp and you can’t send your kids to school and you can’t go to work and you can’t work out without worrying about being shot, then where can you go?” Mantell asked.

Members of the club, usually a crowded, convivial place, were asking that question as many sat in disbelief, wondering why such violence struck one of their sanctuaries during a noontime workout session.

“We pride ourselves on giving our members a sense of safety,” said Christina Sears, 39, a personal trainer who works at the center. “We’re family and now we’re mourning together.”

Killed were Charles Tucker, 37, whom Buquet shot on the sidewalk before storming the entrance to the club; Laxmi Patel, 19, a club member who was standing just inside the entrance; Helen-Mary Spatz, 36, a mother of four, and Rebecca Negrette, 31, who was shot while riding an exercise bike minutes after finishing her shift in the club’s child-care center.

Other employees rushed eight children--including a 6-month-old and Negrette’s 4-year-old son--to safety.

“I just feel a need to go inside and deal with it emotionally,” said member Theresa Cates, 30, a firefighter. “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe again.”

Cates left a bouquet and note addressed to Negrette that read: “There will always be a place in my heart where you shall live on. My life will never be the same.”

“My first thought when I heard people had been killed was, ‘Don’t let it be Cindi,’ the head aerobics coordinator,” said a tearful Janice Brown, 33, who brought flowers. “But then I heard it was Becky (Rebecca Negrette) and Mary-Helen (Spatz) and it’s just as bad. I feel so violated by this.”

Located in a commercial section of El Cajon, the fitness center opened in 1981 and serves as an exercise facility and communal gathering spot for a diverse membership that includes the young and the old.

Buquet, his mother, his stepfather and his sister bought a family membership at the center three months ago, center officials said. Memberships cost $19 a month.

On Mondays, the busiest day of the week, more than 1,500 persons use the two-story center with its exercise bikes, Nautilus weights and juice bar. Lee Prodor, attorney for Family Fitness Centers, said the center may reopen today. “It may be morbid,” he said, “but people are ready to start working out again. Maybe it’s therapy. One guy was very angry that he couldn’t play racquetball.”

Prodor said the company does not feel it has a financial liability for the rampage, citing the McDonald’s massacre in San Ysidro. In that case, lawsuits against the fast-food giant were dismissed. “We had no prior knowledge of a life-threatening situation,” Prodor said.

Through attorney Don de Camara, Buquet’s stepfather and mother, Bob and Janet Buquet, said the youth had used marijuana and LSD in high school and had recently been treated for depression stemming from a knee injury that required surgery and curtailed his weightlifting regimen.

In a tearful interview with a local television station, Janet Buquet said she knew of no motive for the attack and called her son “a quiet, soft-spoken, sweet little boy” until he began taking drugs. She said in the last six months her son had begun listening to “metallic music” and looking at “dark reading materials.”

She said her son, at the depths of his depression, would say: “I don’t know where the pain’s coming from, Mom.” Bob Buquet said the teen-ager wanted to become a writer or musician.

The San Diego County medical examiner said tests to determine if Buquet’s body contained drugs would not be completed for several weeks.

Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella contributed to this story.