The Oxnard Rampage : Mayor’s Wife Tells of Narrow Escape

As she lay on the ground--wounded and bleeding and unable to walk--Irma Lopez thought she was about to die.

Seconds earlier, as a gunman sprayed the Oxnard unemployment office with bullets, she made up her mind to abandon her hiding place under her desk and try to scramble to safety on her hands and knees.

Just short of the front door, shotgun pellets ripped into her back and the force of the blast propelled her outside. But the gunman wasn’t finished.

He continued to fire at her through the door and windows on the C Street side of the Oxnard Employment Development Department, Lopez recalled Wednesday in an interview from her hospital bed. Glass was flying all around her as she struggled to her feet.

“He was still shooting at me and I tried to get up but I fell down,” said the 47-year-old wife of Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez. “I kept thinking he was going to come out and finish me off.”

Lopez managed to get up and take a few steps before collapsing on the sidewalk. Ray Gonzales, an insurance salesman who works near the unemployment office and was outside in his pickup truck, called to her to try again.

She could see the gunman peeking under desks and continuing toward her. She crawled and hobbled toward Gonzales’ truck. Finally, Gonzales pulled Lopez into the truck and sped off to St. John’s Regional Medical Center.

“He saved my life,” Lopez said. “I thought I would never see my girls again.”

Lopez was among four people wounded last week when unemployed computer engineer Alan Winterbourne went on a shooting rampage at the Oxnard unemployment office.

He killed four people, including Oxnard Police Detective James E. O’Brien, before being shot dead by police. Two of the wounded, Lopez and Catherine Stinson of Port Hueneme, remain hospitalized.

Lopez, a former aide to state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) and longtime board member of El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, has been married to the mayor for 14 years. They have two daughters.

She is a 20-year employee of the state Employment Development Department. She transferred from the Ventura office to the Oxnard office less than two months ago.

Although she is only three years from retirement, Lopez now says she is unsure whether she ever will return to work.

“Right now, at first thought, I would say never,” said Lopez, wearing a green robe as she lay in her hospital bed. “Right now I’m just terrified of everything.”

Doctors removed shotgun pellets from her body, including some lodged dangerously close to her spleen. Some pellets could not be removed and will remain.

The buckshot caused some nerve damage, but Lopez is expected to fully recover from her wounds. What will be harder, she said, is to recover from the emotional scars left by the rampage.

She said she remembers diving under her desk when she realized that someone was shooting in the building. Co-worker Anna Velasco, one of those killed by the gunman, went under her desk at the same time.

“I thought, ‘If he comes back here, I’m just a sitting duck,’ ” Lopez recalled thinking before she scrambled for the door. “Apparently Anna stayed under her desk.”

Lopez said she doesn’t recall ever talking to Winterbourne, but remembers coming across his name once while trying to find applicants for a job.

“I thought, ‘Something has got to be wrong here. You have a degree, you’re an engineer, but you can’t find a job?’ ” Lopez said. “I don’t think I interviewed him. I would have remembered.”

Lopez was moved out of St. John’s intensive-care unit and into a private room on Tuesday. The room is crowded with gifts and flowers from well-wishers. Newspapers with headlines telling of the carnage and its aftermath were scattered around her bed.

Until Tuesday, she was fed through tubes sticking into her arms.

“This is the first good day I’ve had,” said Lopez, who expects to be in the hospital for at least another week. “Today, I had the best mashed potatoes in the world.”

Lopez said she will decide whether she wants to go back to work after she recovers. But she said that even before the shooting she had been thinking about slowing down and spending more time with daughters Marisa, 13, and Tiffany, 11.

“I have a second chance to be with them,” Lopez said. “What a tragedy it would have been for them to lose their mother.”