7-Year Job Search May Have Spurred Rampage

Investigators Friday speculated that chronic unemployment was the apparent reason Alan Winterbourne snapped and went on Ventura County’s bloodiest shooting rampage, killing four people before dying at the hands of police.

Oxnard police said Friday marked the seventh anniversary of a state rejection of Winterbourne’s claim for unemployment benefits. His shooting rampage Thursday began at the Oxnard unemployment office.

However, authorities said that they cannot be sure that the stress of being out of work was what caused Winterbourne to erupt. “We don’t know what the motive will be because our suspect is dead,” Oxnard Police Cmdr. Joseph Munoz said. “We will never know what it will be.”

Police do know that Winterbourne, 33, had looked long and hard for a job without success since losing his position as a Northrop computer systems engineer in February, 1986. They say he apparently got tired of looking for employment and decided it was time to turn to violence.

He somehow gathered four high-powered guns and planned the rampage, said Cmdr. Tom Cady. About 20 minutes before the shooting, he calmly walked into a local newspaper office and handed over a file of material documenting his nearly eight-year battle with unemployment.

“Here’s some documents,” he told an editor of the Ventura County Star-Free Press. “Please take a look at them.”

On his way out of the door, he said: “You don’t have to do it now.”

Inside were more than 200 job rejection letters and other files relating to his lack of work.

He apparently drove from there to the Employment Development Department office in Oxnard. At 11:41 a.m., he walked into the building, went behind the counter and shot seven people using a .44-caliber revolver and a 12-gauge shotgun, Cady said. Three victims--including two employees--died.

The gunman went outside, where he was met by officers. After a short foot chase and gunfight with the officers, he drove off in his vehicle before being stopped in traffic. Cady said oncoming traffic prevented Winterbourne from making a left turn, so he stopped in the middle of the street and pulled a .300 magnum rifle, peered through a scope and shot Officer James E. O’Brien in the head about 200 feet away.

O’Brien, an eight-year veteran, was crouched behind his car door, Cady said.

“The position of safety is in that doorjamb, where you have the hinges to give you protection,” Cady said. “But the guy with a scoped rifle was able to shoot him.”

From that intersection, Winterbourne drove to the Ventura unemployment office several blocks away, pursued by officers who shot and killed him.

Oxnard Chief Harold Hurtt said investigators are not sure if Winterbourne intended to injure more workers at the Ventura unemployment office.

“We don’t know whether he intended to go there or just ended up at that location,” Hurtt said.

Since graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a computer science degree in 1985, Winterbourne had been living in a middle-class Ventura neighborhood with his mother. A year before graduation, his father--a Ventura College ceramics teacher--committed suicide by swallowing a poisonous compound used to glaze pottery.

Investigators said some of the documents Winterbourne dropped off at the newspaper showed that after Winterbourne resigned from his job as a systems engineer with Northrop Corp.’s Ventura division in February, 1986, he applied for unemployment benefits.

His request was rejected after Northrop challenged it on the basis that Winterbourne left the company of his own accord. He appealed the denial, but that too was rejected after a hearing Dec. 3, 1986.

Even some state unemployment officials said they could see how not having a job since 1986 would anger Winterbourne.

“1986 was boom times,” said Sharrel Wyatt, chief administrative law judge for the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, which denied Winterbourne’s appeal. Wyatt said no information on the Winterbourne appeal exists in the agency’s files, which are purged every three years.

More recently, Winterbourne had re-established his relationship with the jobs office. He was seeking its services through a job-referral program.

Cady said state unemployment officials were cooperating with the investigation. He said detectives planned to interview employees about services they provided Winterbourne for possible clues.

“We don’t know if there was any one person (handling Winterbourne’s case), or if there were several people who dealt with him,” Cady said. Employment agency officials, who kept their offices in Oxnard and Ventura closed Friday, were not releasing any information on the Winterbourne case.

“We have some information, but not necessarily thorough information,” said Anita Gore, an agency spokeswoman.

Cady said he did not know if Winterbourne’s weapons were legally bought and registered. The owners of gun shops in Ventura and Oxnard said they had no records of purchases by Winterbourne.