Neighbors Shocked Over Condo Shooting

The swings and slides of the playground stood empty in the center of the condominium complex Tuesday and a hush settled over the buildings. The neighbors still couldn’t believe that the quiet couple who seemed so happy together had marital problems that led to two shooting deaths.

On Tuesday, a day after Calvin Manuel Stanfield killed his 3-year-old son and himself and wounded his wife with a hunting rifle, the residents of the American Beauty complex in Canyon Country still found it hard to believe.

“People are shocked. This kind of thing doesn’t happen here,” said one resident, who wished to remain anonymous. “I just moved here, and now . . . I guess this could happen anywhere in California.”

Neighbors were reeling from the news that the 35-year-old man and his son, Dylan, were dead. Rhonda Stanfield, 32, was in fair condition Tuesday at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia.

Recovering from the murder-suicide and from being evacuated from their homes by a Sheriff’s Department SWAT squad, most said they were surprised to find that the couple had marital problems.

Mike Maneker, who lives across from the Stanfields, said there was never any sign that the Stanfields were at odds. Calvin Stanfield was always in a good mood and seemed to enjoy being with his son, Maneker said.

Calvin Stanfield had offered to help Maneker find a job last year when Maneker was out of work.

Stanfield brought him an application for a job with the city of Los Angeles, for which Stanfield worked driving a truck, according to Maneker.

“I had seen [Calvin] and Dylan a lot over the summer,” Maneker said. “They were always laughing and swimming together.”

Another neighbor, who declined to be identified, said that the family was always together, recalling them during Halloween last year.

“They went trick-or-treating all over the complex dressed up,” the neighbor said. “It seems so sad now. They seemed like they were having a lot of fun then.”

When deputies told her that a man had wounded his wife and was holed up in his home, “they were the last couple that I thought of,” she said.

The couple had been separated for several weeks, and Calvin Stanfield had moved out to live in the San Fernando Valley. Earlier Monday afternoon, they argued at Gold’s Gym in Northridge, where Calvin confronted his estranged wife as she exercised. The woman telephoned the Devonshire station of the Los Angeles Police Department to make a complaint.

Police are unsure exactly how the quarrel moved to the couple’s home or how Calvin got inside.

They said that after the fight had gone on for a while, Rhonda left the condo to get help from one of her neighbors, an off-duty Los Angeles police officer, deputies said. On her way back, Calvin opened fire on her in the condo courtyard with a .30-’06 hunting rifle, hitting her in the right thigh.

The off-duty officer pulled her to safety, a deputy said.

Deputies arrived soon after and began evacuating the complex because they believed Stanfield might have barricaded himself inside with the gun, prepared to fight it out. But witnesses said they heard a series of gunshots minutes after the woman was wounded. Deputies now believe that Stanfield turned the gun on his son and then himself shortly after wounding his wife.