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Shooting Victim Lives in Fear : Crime: Newport Beach woman suffers a year after being wounded by former mail carrier Mark Hilbun.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Before May 6, 1993, Patricia Salot liked to think of herself as a fearless woman. But that was before her car ended up at an intersection here on a grisly afternoon that she and most of Orange County will never forget.

It was there that a gunman later identified as Mark Richard Hilbun pumped six shots into her.

Moments earlier, Salot had spotted her company’s magnetic truck signs on the side of Hilbun’s pickup and, suspecting a robbery, had chased him. At the intersection, she had confronted the man, whose image she now yearns to forget, if only for a moment.

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A year later, the pain is no better.

“It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever had to deal with fear. Real fear,” she said last week, sobbing quietly. “Before, I had no fear of anything. And now, I’m consumed with fear. I have to think about every move I make for at least 10 minutes.”

With the first anniversary of her near death looming, Salot finds that one moment of peace even more elusive. Of those who survived what police call a 38-hour exercise in terror, Salot’s physical injuries are the worst by far.

Daily life has become a physical and psychological treadmill, in which eating, sleeping, walking, talking and being with friends and family members are constant reminders that Patricia Salot is a much different woman now--one with crippling disabilities.

In a three-day rampage in which two people were slain, Salot, 49, is one of seven others who police say came close to dying at the hands of Hilbun. Charges against him include two counts of murder, seven counts of attempted murder and one count of attempted kidnaping. He recently pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors hope to try him early next year.

A year later, most who survived choose not to discuss the physical and psychological aftereffects. Phone numbers and addresses have changed; relationships and jobs have ended. Several admit being coached into silence by prosecutors wary of pretrial publicity in seeking the death penalty against Hilbun, 39, who turns 40 on May 9.

Police say Salot was the last of Hilbun’s victims on the first and most violent day of a countywide crime spree that triggered one of the largest manhunts in the history of Southern California.

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They say that, on the morning of May 6, Hilbun began the day by stabbing to death his mother, Frances Hilbun, 63, and her cocker spaniel, Golden, at her home in Corona del Mar. He then drove to the Dana Point Post Office where he had been a letter carrier.

There, he shot to death his best friend, Charles T. Barbagallo, 42, hitting him between the eyes with a single blast from a .22 Magnum revolver. He also wounded former co-worker Peter Gates, 45, who had rushed to Barbagallo’s side to help him, according to the 13-count indictment handed down in January.

As he pulled the trigger, he shouted, “Kim, Kim!,” investigators say, referring to Kim Springer, a fellow postal worker with whom he had become infatuated to the point of obsession. Hilbun had been fired because of it.

After stalking her for more than a year, Hilbun was trying to kidnap Springer, 30, when he showed up at the post office shortly before 10 a.m., according to police. She has remained largely silent over the incident.

Hilbun has told at least one person that when he stabbed his mother, slit the throat of her dog and shot his best friend, he was convinced that the world was about to end and wanted to spare them the impending holocaust.

Part of his plan, he claimed, was to escape into the wild with Springer and start the human race over, like Adam and Eve.

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Jack M. Earley, Springer’s attorney, said last week that Springer is deciding whether to sue her current employer, the U.S. Postal Service, or her union, the National Assn. of Letter Carriers, for failing to provide adequate protection from Hilbun, against whom she earlier had won a restraining order. Hilbun had made his intentions known, sending her a letter that said he was going to “kill us both and take us both to hell.”

He also had been hospitalized twice in prior months for treatment of manic depression and had a history of psychiatric problems dating to his days in the Air Force.

Springer and Earley declined additional comment. And most employees at the post office in the quaint downtown section of Dana Point were equally reticent.

“I just don’t want to talk about it,” said Gates, who was struck by particles from the bullet that killed Barbagallo. “I’ve resisted talking about it to anyone and everyone--reporters, postal inspectors, shrinks, you name it. It’s just my way of dealing with it. It’s in the past. You’ve got to pick up your life and move on.”

Art Martinez, the district manager who supervises the Dana Point Post Office, has barred the news media from the facility and discouraged employees from giving interviews.

“They no longer want any intrusion into their lives,” Martinez said. “They were as traumatized as anyone would be from such an incident. They’re doing the very best they can under the circumstances and wish to return to a normal routine of serving the customers.”

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After he left the post office on the morning of May 6, Hilbun then shot John Kersey, 65, in what police say was a failed robbery attempt four blocks away. Kersey, who could not be reached for comment, suffered scrapes, bruises and a gunshot wound to his left arm.

At 2 p.m., Hilbun broke into the home of Dana Point resident Scott Waltz, where, police say, he drank Waltz’s wine and beer. Hilbun also removed the kayak that had been on top of his own blue-gray Toyota pickup and left it at Kersey’s house. (He also had added to his truck a stolen Iowa license plate and stolen magnetic signs from Salot’s company).

About an hour later in Newport Beach, Hilbun encountered Salot at the corner of Signal Road and Cliff Drive, where, angry at her confrontation, he got out of his pickup, and shot her six times, police say. Had her dog not barked, stirring her from her stupor, she says she might have not had the wherewithal to drive one more block, where a delivery man came to her aid.

About 24 hours later, on Friday, May 7, Hilbun checked into the Best Western Royal Plaza International Inn in Garden Grove, investigators said. By this time, most of Southern California was in a frenzy, with police units throughout the state on full alert.

Late the next day, around midnight, Hilbun approached Elizabeth Shea and Jim Brown at a drive-up teller machine in Fountain Valley. He robbed them of $104 and then opened fire, wounding both, authorities say.

About 15 minutes later, he ordered vodka and 7-Up cocktails at the Centerfield Sports Bar & Grill in Huntington Beach, where police say two customers recognized him from TV news reports. Dressed in white cotton pants, a Hawaiian shirt and sandals, he surrendered without a struggle.

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Since then, Hilbun has grown his hair long, grown a beard, trimmed his hair, refused to eat jail food, lost weight and tried to commit suicide by hurling himself from the second floor of the Orange County Jail, fracturing his spine. Hilbun, who had earlier compared himself to Christ, said he was hoping to sacrifice himself for the good of humanity.

Denise Gragg, the public defender representing Hilbun, said last week that he is now being given “antipsychotic” medication and an antidepressant and is, in her words, “the sickest person I’ve ever dealt with.”

Hilbun has declined to be interviewed. Reached at their home in Arizona, his father, R. Leslie Hilbun, and stepmother, Mary Jane Hilbun, also declined, referring all questions to Gragg.

“The evidence shows that he was suffering from a severe mental illness and had been for quite some time” before May 6 of last year, Gragg said. “His mental state was such that he’s . . . not responsible for what happened. The place for him to be housed for the rest of his life is a mental hospital and not a prison.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Rick King said, “Our view of the facts and circumstances surrounding this crime spree is that he did know the difference between right and wrong.”

But Gragg said Hilbun, whose condition had been diagnosed as manic-depressive, had quit taking his prescribed Lithium when the slayings occurred and is, today, “manic-depressive at a minimum. At the time that it happened, he was in what I would call an extreme psychotic state.”

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And now? “I’m not sure how much of this he understands,” she said. “The best way of describing him is it’s like talking to someone through a thick pane of glass. You can tell you’re just not making the connections you need to make. It’s as though he’s never tracking . . . a single thing you’re saying.”

Jill Lloyd was a classmate of Hilbun’s at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, where he graduated in 1972. She was friendly with his sister, Lindsey, whom Lloyd described as an effervescent and popular cheerleader.

“They were the All-American family, although Mark hung out almost exclusively with the parking-lot crowd,” Lloyd said. “He’s what I would call a between-the-buildings type.”

A year after the shootings, Lloyd said, the prevailing feeling in the old neighborhood is one of shock, sadness, and most of all, embarrassment. For a school proud of such alumni as former major league catcher Gary Carter--a classmate of Hilbun’s--and pop singer Jackson Browne, Sunny Hills High has had to bear a shame for one of its graduates.

As much as anyone, Salot knows what it means to be on the other end of such random violence. Much of her time has been spent trying to eat, sleep and cope. Knowing it’s one year later hasn’t helped.

The onrushing date has “opened up so many feelings. It’s turned out to be more physically and psychologically devastating than I ever thought it could be,” she said, crying often during an interview.

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She described the consequences of each of the six bullets:

She took two shots in the left side of her neck. One blew out her lower jaw on the left side. Another blew up in her face, exploding her bottom right jaw--in her words, “making corn flakes” of the “part that goes into the upper jaw. It made my face asymmetrical.” She suffers from numbness on most of her right side and in other parts of her body.

A third shot entered her left forearm, giving her a compound fracture and tearing out the tendons in her thumb.

“I still can’t grasp or bend or make a fist,” she said. “I also lost the bottom portion of my left little finger.”

A former marketing specialist, she can no longer type, or work, which has placed a financial strain on her husband and the rest of her family, which has its own problems adjusting to “the new Patti.” She’s involved in extensive physical therapy, and she and her husband both see a psychologist.

A fourth shot grazed the top of her left shoulder, leaving her with a limited range of motion.

A fifth bullet grazed the breast tissue under her left armpit, leaving her with a permanent scar.

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The sixth bullet entered her left hip, traveling to her right side, where it remains lodged. Doctors are reluctant to remove it, she said, fearing more damage. The nerve damage is already considerable.

“My left leg drops lower than my right,” she said. “It impedes my ability to walk. I have to lift the leg purposely to keep from tripping.”

Doctors recently removed bone marrow from her hip to replace the bone in her face.

“I have a plate in my right lower jaw,” she said, “and I’m still not able to open my mouth very much. Just recently, I had my jaws wired again.”

And none of that is the worst part.

“He killed the other Patti. She’s gone,” Salot said, brushing back tears. “There’s the Patti who was shot and now there’s me, running around with all these disabilities. He left behind a person that some people call stronger--a survivor.

“My essence, my soul, is still here, but I’m having to learn a whole new way of life. And in many ways, I don’t know how to do it. I’m grateful to be alive, but this life belongs to a person that I and the rest of the world don’t know--and won’t for quite some time.”

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