Software Firm’s Workers Struggle With Colleague’s Shooting Death

Computer programmer Rick Woodman will remember the way the gunfire sounded for the rest of his life. Not the way he expected. At first, he thought it was a nail gun.

Then, as the reports continued, one after another, he realized what it was, what it had to be. He heard screaming from the first floor of Postal Innovations and realized it was receptionist Sandy Strecker.

He ran from his office on the second floor and scrambled down a stairway to find his boss face down in a puddle of blood. In another pool of blood nearby lay Mikhail Khaimchayev, 29, a former employee who had been laid off months before.

“I asked him, ‘Why? Why did you shoot Sheldon?’ ” said Woodman, tears coming to his eyes as he recalled the scene Thursday.

“ ‘Because he would not give me work,’ ” Khaimchayev replied in a thick Russian accent, according to Woodman.

The day after Sheldon Snyder, 36, died in a hail of gunfire, employees gathered to share memories of the shooting, of the man who died, and the mild-mannered guy accused of killing him.

While Khaimchayev lies in a hospital bed in Oxnard recovering from an allegedly self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities have arrested him on suspicion of murder, Sheriff’s Capt. Keith Parks said. Investigators also served a search warrant on the West Hollywood home Khaimchayev shares with his father, Yuri.

Snyder’s office was closed Thursday, but workers at the Verdugo Way business still came in. Some to do a little work. Others just to talk.

“I don’t know why I’m here today,” said Woodman, 43, of Ventura, standing in front of a small orange sign notifying customers the office was closed. “I had to come back, I guess. I just needed to come back.”

Snyder was co-owner of the 2-year-old computer software firm. Steve Simone, president and 80% owner of Postal Innovations, said he worked with Snyder for 15 years. They met after Snyder graduated from college in Pennsylvania with a computer science degree. Simone was software manager for Unisys Corp. in Camarillo, and Snyder came to work as a programmer. Through the years, they became close friends.

“He was my brother, actually,” said Simone.

Always the ‘Go-To Guy’

The two eventually decided to open their own business, using “his programming capabilities and my business sense,” Simone said. A third partner, Forrest Kendall, owns 10% of the business.

The trio opened their main office in Camarillo, with other offices in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., doing business with an array of companies, including the U.S. Postal Service and IBM.

Snyder was always the “go-to guy.”

“He was the one people went to when they needed something done, and something done fast,” Woodman said.

And he was the one given the unpleasant task of telling Khaimchayev that the firm no longer needed him. Khaimchayev was hired last year as a 90-day contract employee, but never measured up, his former co-workers said.

They said he knew very little about computers.

“He barely knew how to turn on a computer,” said intern George Kimbro. “He would ask me questions about very basic stuff.”

More than that, Khaimchayev, a Russian immigrant, could not speak English very well.

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“His accent was so strong, it was very difficult to understand him,” Simone said.

And so, despite the Russian’s polite demeanor and apparent willingness to work, Snyder let him go. That was eight months ago.

“I can only speculate that that’s why he focused his anger at Sheldon,” Simone said.

In the succeeding months, Khaimchayev continued to call the office asking for work. One supervisor told him that he needed to improve his English skills.

“He seemed OK with that,” Woodman said. “He even called our boss back and thanked him for the advice.”

But when Postal Innovations put ads in the paper looking for new programmers recently, Khaimchayev tried again, and was turned down, again.

“I think he took it as a personal affront from Sheldon,” Woodman said. “He blamed it on him that he couldn’t get work.”

In the hours before the shooting on Wednesday, Khaimchayev called Postal Innovations and asked if Snyder was working, employees said. Yes, a staffer told him, he would be in all day.

Khaimchayev showed up later in his 1985 Ford Mustang. Strecker said she didn’t see a gun when Khaimchayev walked into the office just after 2 p.m. She wasn’t particularly concerned.

“It was a little unusual to see him there,” Strecker said. “But I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

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Always polite, he greeted Strecker with a smile and asked her how she was doing.

“I said, ‘I’m fine, how are you?’ ” Strecker said.

He didn’t reply. Instead, he walked to Snyder’s office just a few feet away and from the hallway fired round after round, Strecker said. The last bullet he put into his own abdomen, deputies said.

Woodman was working upstairs at the time. He and eight other employees heard the shots and screams from Strecker. Most said they remember three loud bangs, then a pause, three more shots, a pause, and then a final spasm of two to three more shots.

“At first I thought it was a nail gun,” Woodman said. “I thought the receptionist was just startled. I guess it’s the way the mind works. You don’t want to believe the worst.”

Downstairs, Strecker picked up the phone and dialed 911. She was still screaming when the dispatcher came on the line.

As the shots died down, Woodman realized he was listening to gunfire. He thought a gun battle in the street had spilled into the office.

Attempting to Come to Terms

“I wanted to get down and help Sandy,” Woodman said. “I heard her screaming. Then we thought the whole office was being targeted. He was firing enough shots to take the whole office out.”

Woodman and programmer John Carroll ran downstairs. From the bottom of the stairwell, Woodman peeked around the corner and saw Khaimchayev lying in the hallway on his back, arms spread out, an empty clip next to a 9-millimeter gun, he said.

Carroll kicked the gun away while Woodman ran into Snyder’s office and held his mortally wounded boss around the shoulders. He saw three bullet holes in the fleece pullover Snyder was wearing.

“I thought maybe he was still alive,” Woodman said. “I heard some gurgling. I thought it was him trying to breathe, but his lungs were filling with blood.”

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Woodman wrapped the gun in paper towels and took it upstairs to save it for police. When he returned to Snyder’s side, he couldn’t hear any breathing.

“I held on to him,” Woodman said. “I held him by the shoulders and told him to hold on. I told him help was on the way. But I was pretty sure he was dead.”

He walked into the hallway where Carroll held Khaimchayev’s hand and questioned him about the shooting, Woodman said Thursday.

Employees were shocked because Khaimchayev never showed any signs of anger, they said.

“He wasn’t the kind of person that would have displayed that,” said office controller Denise Asvitt. “Really, this was so out of the blue. . . . [Snyder] was just such a neat man. Incredibly adept. He did the best and expected people to do their best.”

Perhaps most shaken was the man who was not even in the building when the shooting occurred--Postal Innovations’ president, Simone.

He tried to speak to reporters outside his Camarillo office Thursday afternoon, but emotion overtook him and he stepped away for several minutes to regain his composure.

“He’s one of the smartest people I ever met,” Simone said. “Just one of the top programmers in the field. He was a generous, quiet man.”