Worker, 17, Dies After 3 Are Shot at McDonald’s

It was approaching closing time at the McDonald’s along busy Interstate 80 when a lone man in a football-style jacket strolled through a side door and, as he laughed, opened fire with a revolver, shooting three young female employees.

On Friday, a 17-year-old, the most seriously wounded, died of a gunshot wound to the head.

After the quick flash of gunfire, the gunman walked out of the restaurant--without saying a word, taking nothing--leaving police in this East Bay, blue-collar community searching for answers to the Thursday night tragedy.

About a dozen detectives were pursuing numerous leads Friday, including trying to track down a former McDonald’s employee who was said to resemble a composite drawing of the suspect. Police aides were combing the parking lot outside the eatery, searching through trash bins filled with soggy hamburger wrappers and empty soft drink cups and handing out copies of the composite drawing.

“It’s very baffling, very bizarre,” Vallejo Police Lt. Al Lehman said at a morning news conference. He said police could pinpoint no motive for the shootings.

“I hope it’s not random because that kind of scares all of us,” he said. “So you hope there’s a reason and one reason we’d look at is a disgruntled employee, same as if it’s a boyfriend/girlfriend thing. We have to check that. You have three female victims, you look at it maybe as a disgruntled boyfriend.”

The outside of the restaurant was festooned with Christmas decorations when the shots rang out about 9:20 p.m. The young women were hit as they were meeting near the front counter. Each was shot at close range. The one customer in the restaurant was not harmed.

“It’s my understanding that there was not a word spoken but he began laughing,” Lehman said. “He was laughing as he was firing.”

One of the victims, 17-year-old Melanie Boncato of Vallejo, was airlifted to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, where she died shortly before noon Friday, according to the Contra Costa County Coroner’s office.

The other two, Mercedez Manuel, 21, and Larienel Sapinoso, 17, were hospitalized in stable condition with head wounds.

Police said the suspect was described as a black man in his mid-20s to early 30s, 5 feet, 9 inches to 6 feet tall, wearing a dark football jacket with light lettering.

Investigators found a Green Bay Packers jacket on the lawn of a nearby Ramada Inn in the hours after the shooting, Lehman said. But a late-night door-to-door check of every room in the motel did not turn up anyone matching the suspect’s description.

“I wished I did recognize him, I’d turn him in,” said Ramada desk clerk Joseph Tomlin.

Throughout the day Friday, officers were talking with the victims’ families and other employees of the McDonald’s. Tips to a quickly established hotline were beginning to come in, but none were initially promising.

Lehman said officers also were checking a report that a man resembling the composite was seen at a nearby store. He had been noticed because he was suffering a nosebleed.

The restaurant, located in a busy commercial center near the freeway, remained closed, with the holiday lights still burning. Inside, employees shooed away reporters.

“This is a tragic incident, and obviously our first and foremost concern is for our employees and their families,” said Laura Dudell, a spokeswoman for the owner of the franchise.

Meanwhile, stunned and saddened residents said the tragedy was another blow to the image of this city of 116,000, where the town’s main attraction, an animal theme park, is in financial straits and the economy has yet to recover from the closure last March of nearby Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

For some, the tragedy also brought back memories of the day 12 years ago when 21 people were killed and 19 wounded in one of the worst single-day massacres by a lone gunman in U.S. history. That incident took place at a McDonald’s south of San Diego.

The heavily armed gunman, James Oliver Huberty, was killed by a police sniper after the slaughter that lasted more than 70 minutes.

Times staff writer Virginia Ellis and Associated Press contributed to this story.