Hospital Shooter Carried 2 Revolvers

The man accused of fatally shooting three Orange County hospital workers five hours after the death of his 72-year-old mother carried two snub-nosed revolvers and dozens of ammunition rounds, and police believe he would have shot many more people had he not been disarmed by one of his victims.

During a furious struggle in a crowded lobby on Tuesday morning, the mortally wounded employee, Ronald Robertson, managed to force the gunman to the ground and disarm him.

“Had it not been for Mr. Robertson . . . detectives feel that there would have been additional casualties in this case,” Anaheim Police Sgt. Joe Vargas said. “He really did a job. It’s amazing when seemingly ordinary people rise to the top.”

Police said Wednesday that the suspect, 43-year-old Dung Trinh, may have planned the shooting spree and that a preliminary investigation found no evidence that hospital employees mistreated his mother.

“We can’t determine that [any doctor] did something that led to his mother’s death,” Vargas said. The deadly shooting was the result of an “irrational and misguided motive--and that is revenge for his mother’s death,” he said.

Police are focusing their investigation on the hours between the time Trinh’s mother died at a nearby hospital and the moment he started shooting and shouted, “You killed my mother!”

The time lapse suggests Trinh didn’t merely snap: He had time to arm himself and plan his attack, investigators said. If the case reaches trial, that will be significant and, if Trinh is convicted, it could pave the way for prosecutors to seek the death penalty, officials said.

California law allows jurors to choose to convict an accused killer of voluntary manslaughter rather than homicide if they believe he acted in the “heat of passion.” Manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison, while homicide can bring a life prison term or execution.

Trinh is expected to be arraigned today on murder charges. Because three people died, a murder conviction would make Trinh eligible for the death penalty.

Anaheim police have asked the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to trace the weapons. Detectives don’t believe the guns were stolen, but they declined to release the weapons’ serial numbers or say whether Trinh has a gun license.

Trinh, an unemployed chef and emigre from Vietnam, lived with his ailing mother in a one-bedroom Anaheim apartment. The 43-year-old has no criminal record and no history of mental illness. Tattoos cover his body, prompting investigators to probe possible gang affiliations. His mother suffered from diabetes, kidney disease and relied on a wheelchair after breaking her hip earlier this year.

Police said they are skeptical of Trinh’s contentions that his mother was mistreated. They pointed out, for example, that she had only been a patient at West Anaheim Medical Center once--and not only was that back in May, it was for hip replacement surgery, Vargas said. The coroner’s office ruled she died of heart disease, police said.

“To believe that hip replacement surgery is a direct cause of death is irrational,” Vargas said. “We will be looking at motivating factors. But at this point, it doesn’t matter what the motivation was; it’s a homicide.”

Hospital workers told police that Trinh had never complained about his mother’s medical treatment, Vargas said.

A preliminary look by hospital officials at her case “found absolutely nothing out of the ordinary,” said Dr. David A. Reid, the chief of staff. “It seems a fairly straightforward case. Nothing pops out at us. We’re wondering if he had a personal vendetta with someone at the hospital.”

Reid said hospital officials will undertake a more thorough review of the case. “Let us bury our dead,” he said. “Let us heal our wounds. Obviously, we have all the time in the world to look into this case.”

Although police said they remain unsure of the gunman’s target, a top hospital official said that Trinh was intent on killing a nurse who had cared for his mother.

Relatives of the nurse said Wednesday she is in seclusion after watching a colleague be shot and killed. “She’s doing how anybody else would be doing if someone died in front of them,” the woman’s daughter said.

Patients and workers arrived at the hospital Wednesday amid tightened security. Guards clad in bulletproof vests, some of them armed, stood at the building’s entrances.

“It’s an odd feeling to walk here where something that violent happened,” said Karen Gardner as she arrived with her mother for tests. “I won’t live in fear. You can’t live in fear.”

Grief and crisis intervention counselors, some sent from nearby hospitals, tended to employees and patients traumatized by Tuesday’s shooting.

“We’re looking for signs that the employees are overtly stressed,” West Anaheim Medical Center spokeswoman Debra Culver said.

Police remain unsure what time the gunman arrived at the medical center. But at 10:45 a.m., police said, Trinh went to the small nurses’ reporting room on the second floor, where he shot and killed nursing assistant Marlene Mustaffa.

Mustaffa was standing near the nurse who hospital officials believe was the gunman’s target, said Dr. Robert McCauley, a staff internist.

Here’s what authorities say happened next:

The gunman left the room and went down the hall to the stairwell, brandishing a .38-caliber revolver. Terrified patients and workers dove for cover. The gunman pointed at several different people but did not shoot.

At a stairwell, he confronted Vincent Rosetti, the hospital’s pharmacy director. Rosetti, police believe, was responding to a call for assistance made before the first shots. He lunged for the revolver but was fatally shot during a struggle.

The gunman walked down the stairs, police said, perhaps reloading one of the two snub-nosed revolvers he had been carrying in a brown leather satchel slung over one shoulder. When he reached the first floor, Robertson was frantically trying to close the automatic double doors separating the shooter from the crowded lobby.

A shot rang out. Robertson, despite being hit, rushed the gunman. During the struggle, the two revolvers fell to the floor. Then two men jumped in and held the shooter until police arrived.

Robertson was struck twice in the chest and once in the neck. He was rushed to the emergency room, where doctors worked for more than an hour to save him.

“One of our investigators was in the ER at the time, and he said it was one of the most emotional scenes he’s ever seen,” Vargas said. “They were trying to save this man’s life, and at the same time some of them were in tears.”

Robertson’s neighbors lovingly recalled how the Vietnam War veteran lived life for his family, particularly for his three teenage children.

“He was a hero to his family. Now he’s a hero to everyone,” said Carolyn Turner, who has lived in the same Fullerton neighborhood for more than two decades.

Robertson suffered stomach wounds and was hit in the eye by shrapnel during the war, Turner said. Another wound left him without sensations in his left arm below the elbow, she said. Robertson, the hospital’s director of environmental services, regularly displayed the American flag and one commemorating soldiers missing in action.

He was raising a daughter, 13, and two sons, ages 15 and 17, Turner said. After work, he often played baseball or soccer outside with one of them. His daughter learned of the shooting on TV news.

“They are at a time when they need their dad the most,” said another neighbor, Dave Eminhizer.

Meanwhile, friends and family from across the country gathered at Mustaffa’s Buena Park home Wednesday afternoon to mourn. Among them was her 88-year-old mother, who flew in from New York.

Although Kirk Premo, Mustaffa’s son, has been a detective with the Napa Police Department for the past two years, nothing could prepare him for the news that she had been slain.

“They don’t train you to deal with this,” said Premo, 31, Mustaffa’s youngest son. “As a detective, you don’t think twice about this happening to you.”

Wearing dark sunglasses, a blue baseball cap and clutching two framed photos of his mother, Premo stepped outside his stepfather’s home to take a break from funeral arrangements and spoke about the woman he had not seen for five months.

Mustaffa raised her eight children--seven sons and a daughter--in New York before heading west 20 years ago. Premo said his mother liked helping people, especially at West Anaheim.

“She loved going to work,” he said.

It was this same quality that inspired Premo to enter law enforcement about 11 years ago. He said that his mother was very upset when she learned that her youngest son was going to be a police officer because she worried about his safety.

“She told me that of all her sons, she’d have to worry most about me,” he said. “I never thought I’d have to worry about her.”

Times staff writers Thao Hua, Jennifer Mena, Jeff Gottlieb, Richard Marosi, correspondents Louise Roug, Susan McCormack and Jason Kandel and Times librarian Sheila A. Kern contributed to this report.