Simi Family’s Slaying Comes as a Horrible Shock to Neighbors

SIMI VALLEY — A mother was often seen in the plain gray house on Hope Street, patiently watching over her young boys as they pedaled their bicycles in circles. A father exchanged pleasantries with neighbors, quick to welcome a new arrival, or to invite friends over for barbecues.

There was no hint that the house would become the scene of one of the bloodiest shooting sprees in Ventura County. On Tuesday, police found the whole family dead, apparently by the father’s hand.

Few neighbors knew the Salman family well. A few said the father, Ahmad, complained to them of depression during typical “over the fence” chats.

And though other neighbors said they heard loud family quarrels and other signs that things were not quite right in the house at the end of the block, they never imagined anything as wrong as what unfolded there at 8:25 a.m. Tuesday.

That was when Salman, who apparently felt he would never get out from under a growing pile of bills, chased his wife and children around the side of his house, shooting them down with a .30-06 hunting rifle before turning the gun on himself in the backyard.

Salman, 44, his wife Nabela, 38, his twin 5-year-old sons Zain and Zaid, and his 3-year-old son Yezen were all pronounced dead before noon.

Kim and Miguel Rodas met the Salmans when they lived at the Lockwood Court condominiums across town several years ago, and they had remained friends.

In the past couple of years, they said, Salman had encountered a series of frustrations: He had tried and failed to get U.S. visas for family members from Syria; two years ago, his wife went home to Syria because she was homesick, then threatened not to come back to the U.S.

He had recently bought a new Ford Taurus, but had trouble making the payments on it and returned the car to the dealer. He didn’t want his wife to work, but she finally had to get a job. She worked at a bowling alley.

Ahmad Salman was out of work on disability. His wife talked often with Kim Rodas, most recently three or four weeks ago. She told Rodas that Salman was losing weight, not eating, sometimes not getting out of bed.

“She said he was a mess, she didn’t know what to do with him,” said Rodas. “He didn’t want her to work, but she was working. I’m sure that was very devastating.”

Amid the throngs of television reporters and police cars, neighbors gathered outside the police barricade blocking off the house, which Ahmad Salman had recently been forced to sell. They wondered how something so horrible could have happened to a family in Simi Valley, in their neighborhood.

Some said Nabela and Ahmad Salman were obviously troubled, but put on a good face for the outside world.

Jason Fein said he and his family recently moved to the neighborhood, and the first person to welcome them was Ahmad Salman.

Their children played together in the cul-de-sac, and Salman was always very nice and well-behaved, not someone who seemed to be on the verge of a violent explosion.

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“We’d always see them out there,” Fein said of Nabela Salman and her children. “It’s the only safe place to ride here, because this street gets pretty crowded with traffic.”

Fein said his daughter often rode along with the Salman children in the cul-de-sac. Though Ahmad Salman once asked him if he knew where to find work, their conversations were otherwise neighborly small talk, he said.

“He just mentioned to me that he was unemployed, he’d been laid off and he was looking for work,” Fein said.

“It’s just sad,” said Maria Karpuzas, who stopped to pray on the corner with some neighbors after hearing the news. “You think people love their children and would never harm them. There’s just no reason, no way of understanding this.”

The humble neighborhood, made up mainly of single-story stucco houses, was ravaged by the 1994 Northridge earthquake, particularly the homes in the cul-de-sac. Some of the homes, including the one that the Salmans purchased nearly two years ago, were still being rebuilt.

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“It’s just a bunch of working-class people,” said Mary Jo Wilson, 46, who has lived in the neighborhood nine years. “Several homes were destroyed in the Northridge quake, but house by house, people have been bringing them up to speed. . . . You can see it in the neighborhood. New lawns, new landscaping, new roofs.

“It’s just incredible. You can’t escape domestic violence, I guess.”

Helen Dearborn, who lives in the mobile home park just behind the Salmans’ house, went out to her porch after hearing the first few shots and saw Salman standing next to a swing set in his backyard, firing a rifle toward the ground. Like several other neighbors in this safety-conscious town, she immediately called 911.

“I mean, you just don’t expect this to happen,” Dearborn said. “It’s just really tragic that someone thinks this is the way to solve their problems.”

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Until February, when he was granted a medical leave, Salman worked for the Harris Corp. in Camarillo as an electronics technician. The company assembles electronic telephone components.

Employees there remembered him as a hard-working man who often talked about his wife and children.

Allen Gizzard-Paul, the quality manager at Harris Corp., was aghast. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “The whole lot? The three kiddies? I can’t believe it.”

Upon learning of the murder-suicide, co-worker Carmen Pena at first rushed from the room in tears.

The two had worked together at Burroughs Corp., until the Westlake firm laid them off and shut down. They reunited on the job at Harris, where Salman came to work in March 1990, according to company records.

“A bunch of us would go out and play pool, and he would always offer to see if I wanted to go,” she said. “He was nice and friendly . . . He was a nice, hard worker, and he got along with everybody.”

When he asked for a medical leave in February, there was no hint of trouble, said Pena, who had known Salman for 15 years.

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“He was fine, he was in good spirits,” she said. “I just don’t understand why all of this happened. . . . He was always willing to help everybody, especially me.”

Pena, who was Salman’s supervisor, said she had no idea Salman was depressed, adding that he had requested the medical leave himself and left on good terms. She said he always conducted himself professionally at work and covered his work space with photographs of his family.

“When he left he was fine. He was in good spirits. I don’t know why this all happened. He was just a normal person like any of us.”

At the Simi Valley bowling alley where Nabela Salman worked, manager Ken Knox was still in shock, taking measured drags from a cigarette as a few early customers bowled. Salman had worked the snack bar at Brunswick Valley Bowl, ringing up the cash register and cooking, for about four or five months. But a language barrier stood between Salman and the other employees.

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Still, she was reliable and friendly.

“She was very sweet, smiled all the time,” Knox said. “But you could tell something was wrong. She was a little distracted.”

After he asked about her family, Nabela Salman told Knox that her husband was unemployed.

“She said her husband was out of work, very, very, very depressed, mentally sick from depression,” he said.

The killings also took their toll on police and firefighters. Some of them, along with some of the investigators that visited the scene later in the afternoon, were overcome at the sight.

“A lot of these guys have children about that age and it can really bust you up to see a 5-year-old kid shot like that,” said Rob Snyder, a supervisor for MedTrans Ambulance Service in Thousand Oaks.

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Both the Simi Valley Police Department and the Ventura County Fire Department provided psychotherapists, chaplains and other stress counselors for their employees, said Sgt. Bob Gardner.

“We’re all professionals, but nothing really prepares you for this kind of thing,” one officer said.

Bustillo is a Times staff writer and Chi is a correspondent. Times staff writers Scott Hadly, Mack Reed, Kate Folmar and Daryl Kelley, as well as correspondents David R. Baker and Penny Arevalo, contributed to this story.

FAMILY DEAD

A depressed Simi Valley man kills his wife and three children before shooting himself to death. A1