Whatever Set Gunman Off, a Reader Knows the Feeling

On a gloomy, rainy Thursday afternoon last week, Arturo Reyes Torres played out his hand. Packing anger that had simmered for months and enough AK-47 firepower to make it all go away, he drove into a Caltrans maintenance yard in Orange and began the lethal countdown to his own demise.

Peppering the yard with rounds, he killed the boss who fired him six months ago and three other Caltrans workers. Finished with that business, Torres drove out of the yard and back down Batavia Street, quickly made a wrong turn into an oncoming lane and, blocked by an approaching car, got out of his Mercedes and waited to die in a gun battle. Before long, he did, in a fusillade of bullets from police that left Torres lying in the rain-soaked street next to a strawberry patch.

An incredible amount of anger, frustration and desperation is out there on the street. And not just on the corner where Torres died with his assault rifle, shotgun and handgun.

Dead men tell no tales, but one Orange County man who read about Torres feels entitled to speak for him.

“It’s like [Torres] was compelling me to call,” he said over the phone. “I’m not weird, but I’ve been through exactly what this guy went through, although mine turned out differently. But it could have gone the same way.”

The man didn’t want to be identified but described himself as a 60-year-old former airline mechanic. Several years ago, he said, while in the throes of ongoing job-related problems, he developed murderous intent.

One night, he put pencil to paper. “I had a list of what bosses I wanted to take out. I figured this way, if I’m going to kill one and pay the price for that, I might as well take as many as I can.

“I had a list of what floors they were on, how fast it would take me to get to them, what time of day they would be most vulnerable, how fast I could hit them before someone else could get to a telephone, how long it would take the cops to get to the airport before they got me.”

I asked him if he had been serious or just venting frustration. “Any time you sit down and draw up a list like that, it’s serious,” he said. He wouldn’t say how many names were on it, but it was more than one. “I have some close friends, some I would never turn on, but for the others on the list, there were times when

they could have stepped in as mediators and done something to help me, and they didn’t.”

The man said he could feel himself in Torres’ shoes as he carried out the plan that had probably formed months before. He speculates that Torres, an ex-serviceman, “switched from the civilian to the war scenario” once he decided to act.

“It’s like all’s fair in love and war,” he told me. “Like the supervisor who [Torres] was going to kill. He could have had 10 babies born to him tomorrow and it wouldn’t have mattered to Torres. It would have been immaterial. You block all that out. If you’re going to accomplish your mission, you put all the distractions and all the niceties aside. You’ve got to shut them out or you’ll never make it.”

It’s not that the caller was congratulating himself for not following through. Had there been another precipitating setback in his life at that time--such as a family tragedy, for example--that might have been enough to push him over the edge, he said.

“I had sat down back then,” he said, “I won’t say many an evening, and even though I had taken these steps [in compiling the list], I’d say, ‘God, push me one step further. I’m talking the talk but I’m not walking the walk. Let me walk the walk.’ ”

Today, in retrospect? “I’m always glad I didn’t do it.”

One reason he didn’t follow through, he said, was the result of extended leaves granted by his employers. Both he and they realized he was unpredictable, a fact he readily acknowledges. “I had been to several company doctors and they said as long as I talked about it, I wouldn’t do it. The day I stop, they said, would be the day of reckoning.”

He suggested that companies become much more attuned to potentially volatile situations. He speculated that Caltrans videotaping Torres breaking policy by selling $100 of scrap metal was demeaning to a 12-year employee like Torres.

The caller said some murderous rampages are probably unavoidable. But companies can take some steps, such as granting stress leaves, bolstering programs to handle potentially volatile employees and making supervisors aware of actions that can detonate explosive situations.

“I was explosive,” the man said. “I knew I was a walking time bomb and couldn’t help myself if I ever reached the point where I went off. But I had several management people work with me, and in several instances they tried to alleviate the situation.”

After several years on leave, he retired. “The only reason I’m talking to you on the phone today is that over a period of time, the situation was alleviated, when it could have been very explosive.”

The caller said he feels neither sympathy nor condemnation toward Torres. “I’m not feeling sorry for him. The only thing that hit me when reading about it was, ‘Thank you, Lord, you spared me,’ because this had my name written all over it so many times in the past. I could feel the guy’s soul in the articles.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com