Simi Family Slain in an Apparent Murder-Suicide

SIMI VALLEY — An unemployed Simi Valley man racked by depression and debt shot his wife and their three young sons to death Tuesday morning, then turned his hunting rifle on himself in one of the bloodiest shootings in Ventura County history, police said.

Heavily armored Simi Valley police SWAT officers rushed to a modest home in the city’s east end to find Ahmad Salman, 44, curled in death in his backyard, a .30-06 rifle by his side, and his family members dead or dying around him.

His 38-year-old wife, Nabela Salman, and 3-year-old Yezen lay crumpled on the other side of a fence they had climbed over trying to escape, while 5-year-old twins Zain and Zaid lay nearby, said Police Chief Randy Adams.

“He was an out-of-work man, severely depressed, taking medication for it. He was sick,” said a cousin from Simi Valley who declined to be named. “And then this unexpected tragedy happened.”

It was the worst multiple killing in Ventura County since Dec. 2, 1993. That was the day another distraught jobless man, Alan Winterbourne, opened fire on workers at the Oxnard office of the California Employment Development Department, killing four people before police shot him to death.

“No city likes to have an incident like this,” Adams said, as horrified neighbors gathered in the street. “It’s extremely tragic. We won’t know for a while the tragic circumstances that led to this. I can’t imagine what would lead anyone to do something like this.”

Neighbors said the Salmans had a troubled marriage, that they argued loudly and often.

But Ahmad Salman had deeper troubles.

He told neighbors that he suffered from clinical depression and was thousands of dollars in debt.

Linda Shepherd rented a condominium from Salman across town.

“He was always telling me he was financially stressed and he didn’t know what steps he was going to take,” she said Tuesday.

Salman, who emigrated from Syria at least 20 years ago, had been on medical leave from his job as an electrical technician in Camarillo since February.

He told Shepherd two weeks ago that he had taken a $9,000 loss on the recent sale of his house, and that he was carrying $20,000 in credit card debt. He also told her she would have to leave because the family needed to move into the condo.

On a recent visit, Shepherd found Salman at home, squatting in his living room surrounded by stacks of bills, his kids huddled on the couch and his wife sobbing.

“He said, ‘What am I going to do with all these?’ ” over and over, she recalled.

Former neighbor Mary Qualls recalled chatting with Salman as they gardened in their backyards.

“He used to tell me that he was depressed a lot,” she said. “He was on medication. I told him, ‘The medication’s not working.’ ”

At one point, she recalled, “He just told me, ‘Sometimes life is not worth it.’ I told him, ‘It is, if you have your kids.’ ”

The family bought the house on Hope Street in August 1995 and completely renovated it because, like many around it, it had been badly damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Qualls said she told a friend, “You watch, Ahmad’s going to snap.”

Tuesday morning was quiet--until about 8:25 a.m.:

The sound of heavy-caliber gunfire burst through the doors and windows of middle-class tract homes, echoing loudly off the rocky walls of the nearby Arroyo Simi.

Five or six shots, then a pause, then one shot more, neighbors said.

Within minutes, SWAT and patrol officers screeched up to the house, and the SWAT team moved in carefully, unsure whether a gunman was still walking the property.

Police held back three ambulances while the armored special weapons and tactics officers swarmed the house.

Officers rushed in and grabbed Nabela Salman and one of her children, witnesses said.

“I saw a police officer carrying a young child--maybe 5 or 6--slung over his shoulder and running to a waiting ambulance,” said neighbor John Casselberry.

Two county sheriff’s helicopters hovered overhead, one finally landing on a neighborhood street to whisk Nabela Salman and one of her children to Simi Valley Hospital, said Medtrans ambulance supervisor Robert Snyder.

“They were in full cardiac arrest. It appeared they were all shot at least once, and most in the torso,” Snyder said.

Officers circled the house and found Ahmad Salman’s body in the backyard.

Simi Valley police detectives combed the Salmans’ property for evidence, seizing the rifle used in the slayings. They then fanned out to interview neighbors.

Two months ago, Ahmad Salman took the twins, Zain and Zaid, to nearby Knolls Elementary School to pick up a kindergarten enrollment packet, recalled school secretary Jeanne Bitting. The boys had just turned 5 on Mother’s Day.

But Salman never returned the enrollment forms, which required proof of immunization and a physical for the twins, Bitting said.

What struck her most about the trio was their silence: The dark-haired, serious-eyed twins “seemed like quiet, polite little boys,” she said.

A co-worker of Salman’s, Gina Leighton, said he spoke warmly of his children and wife. “He said a lot of nice things about her, like she was a good cook,” said Leighton, a receptionist at Harris Corp., the Camarillo electronics factory where Salman worked.

His supervisor, Allen Gizzard-Paul, said Salman asked for the medical leave he took three months ago. But Salman told others, including Shepherd, he had lost his job.

“He told me he was financially in trouble, that he got laid off,” said Hazem Hijaz, owner of the Woodside Deli & Market, near the Harris plant. “He said he had a wife and children and he had to work. He’s a really nice guy.”

Not long after taking the medical leave, Salman came back into the deli and said he was going back to work, Hijaz said. “He said he was very happy.”

Salman had taken his wife--who neighbors said aspired to be a schoolteacher but couldn’t speak English well enough to land a teaching job--all over Simi Valley to apply for work, everywhere from Pic ‘N’ Save to hardware stores.

During the six months he rented the condo to Shepherd, he demanded she pay the $875 monthly rent in cash. She said Salman began calling her more and more to discuss his troubles.

“It got to the point where he was calling me quite a bit,” she said. “He asked me how things were going. He was lonely, and needed someone to talk to.”

Just recently, Salman told Shepherd that he had sold his home at a loss and needed to move his family back into the condominium soon.

Meanwhile, his depression weighed heavily.

Salman told neighbor Qualls that he had been hospitalized for his depression at one point.

According to Qualls, Salman told her that his wife was nice and put up with a lot from him, that they argued frequently, and that she was the one taking care of the kids.

“He was constantly telling people he was depressed,” said Jan Farris, who rented the condominium from Salman before Shepherd. “The sad thing is, he was crying out for help, but nobody knew what to tell him. I believe he was a good man, but couldn’t take the pressure. . . . He just bit off more than he could chew.”

Salman told Farris that his family had outgrown the condominium and needed the house. But he lamented that the mortgage payments were too high, and often said with bitterness that he would probably have to move his family back into the condominium. Meanwhile, he sometimes asked the Farrises for small loans, once telling them he had no money to register his car.

On a couple of occasions the Farrises visited the Salmans in their new home, where Nabela fixed a Middle Eastern barbecue dinner. Conversation focused on Ahmad Salman’s financial struggles and how hard it was to make it as an immigrant in America. Salman would talk at length about his debt, while his wife, who spoke little English, would say, “It’s very hard, Jan; it’s very hard.”

Farris said the Salmans’ new home was sparsely furnished. The children slept on mattresses on the floor and the furniture was aging.

When the boys got too rambunctious, Farris said, Salman would spank them. This upset his wife. He also confessed that he had children too late in life, and that he couldn’t handle raising them, Farris said.

Police have begun planning psychological counseling for their officers because the violent deaths of the children made it a special case, chillingly similar to another incident that hit the Simi Valley department hard.

On Father’s Day in 1995, a man distraught over the breakup of his marriage herded his two young children into their Simi Valley garage. Larry Sasse shot 4-year-old Breanna and 3-year-old Michael once each in the head, then killed himself--as his ex-wife waited at the police station for him to hand them back from a weekend custody visit.

Mack Reed and Scott Hadly are Times staff writers and Chris Chi is a correspondent. Staff writers Miguel Bustillo, Daryl Kelley and Kate Folmar contributed to this story. Correspondents David R. Baker and Penny Arevalo also contributed.