Other Students Saw Signs of Trouble

Less than a month after they met last fall, UC Santa Barbara freshman David Attias sent a letter to a female classmate.

“You are my best friend that I have ever had, and I cannot imagine ever making a better one,” Attias wrote to Sarahfrances Smith-Withey. “I have known people that care about me, but no people that care about me enough to consciously inspire me to change my problems and become a better person.”

On Friday night, Attias’ troubles--apparent to some of the students who knew him--were visited tragically on the entire school. Driving a black Saab bought by his Hollywood director father, the 18-year-old mowed down five young people walking on a residential street in the Isla Vista neighborhood next to campus, authorities say. Four died and a fifth was critically injured.

Attias, a freshman from Santa Monica, was held without bail at Santa Barbara County Jail on charges of vehicular homicide. The extent of Attias’ difficulties may be better known this week, when sheriff’s investigators hope to complete blood tests to determine whether he took alcohol or drugs before the Friday night tragedy. A sheriff’s spokesman at the scene said Attias displayed signs of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

He is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.

On campus, as student leaders and university administrators put together a week of memorials, questions emerged about Attias’ behavior in recent months, and the response of his fellow students.

At the 10-story Francisco Torres building, a private dormitory where Attias lived on the seventh floor, neighbors recounted conversations with the young man with frantically darting eyes. His classmates said there were warning signs:

He barged into rooms. He followed people into elevators for the companionship. He would invite himself into the meals of others at the cafeteria.

One night just two weeks ago, he knocked on the door of Zack Chancer’s and Rusty Foxe’s suite and asked for a baseball bat. Someone had taken money from him, Attias said, and he wanted to settle the score. “He talked about the most random things,” said Chancer, 19, whose suite mates did all they could to avoid him. “He was always fidgeting. He looked like he was kind of wacked out.”

Although strange, the exchanges were usually polite. One student advised him to get counseling, but there is so far no indication that his behavior was reported to university authorities or police. Yonie Harris, dean of students, said no one had approached her office about Attias. “The first time I heard his name was in connection with this incident,” she said.

Attias also was little known in his family’s Santa Monica neighborhood. The older of two, Attias lived with his parents in a three-bedroom house on 23rd Street. A college friend who had dinner with the Attias family said David Attias idolized his father, Daniel Attias, a director for critically acclaimed TV series such as “Ally McBeal” and “The Sopranos.”

“This is a terrible tragedy,” said his grandmother, Elaine Attias, who is active with a human rights group. “We wish the media and other people would stop calling.” Other than that his family members would not comment. And efforts to reach his attorney were unsuccessful.

Attias’ sister, Rachel, went to boarding school in Connecticut, but David, for the most part, stayed closer to home. He graduated from Concord High School, a little-known private school run by a mother and daughter and tucked into an office building on Wilshire Boulevard. Concord, with a total enrollment of 85, has more than its share of Hollywood children, who gravitate to the small, nurturing environment.

Posted on the front door Sunday were a list of last year’s 21 seniors and all the colleges to which they were accepted. Attias got into 12 schools, all in the West, from Arizona State to the University of San Francisco.

“He was very articulate and it showed in his writing,” said Jennifer Hill, 18, who had a writing class with him at UC Santa Barbara. Attias perked up when the instructor showed Hitchcock movies, and talked of studying film. “When our teacher would ask questions about the film, he would always have a good response.”

Smith-Withey said he would constantly visit, talking wildly and sometimes asking for drugs. In November, he told her he had crashed a Volvo, but soon had a new Saab. “He meant well,” she said. “He was and still is so starved for physical and emotional attention.”

Stories of Erratic Behavior

He reportedly became even more erratic after the Christmas break. He talked constantly about rave parties and played techno music so loud his roommate wanted him to move out. Krysti Wilson, 19, said one day he started telling her and a few other students “an elaborate story” of how he had been raped by a girl. Margaret Tontz, 18, another dorm mate, said he talked about having a falling out with his family.

“He was just really jumpy, not comfortable,” said Adriana Lopez, 18, who lived across the hall.

Last Thursday night, Attias came to the room of Katie Brownstein, 18, down the hall. Brownstein said Attias told her he was a prophet who wanted to spread good through the world. He also spoke of God, the devil, the supernatural, and said he was afraid he was going to die. “I was thinking he was going to commit suicide,” she said.

On Friday at 10:30 p.m., Josh Wolf, another freshman, spotted Attias wearing a backpack. Attias said he was heading out to find a woman, and asked Wolf if he wanted a ride.

Wolf declined.

A half-hour later, Attias’ black Saab collided with five people. A Santa Barbara fire captain called the resulting carnage the worst he had seen on a residential street in his 28-year career.

Killed were Nicholas Bourdakis, 20, a sophomore from the Bay Area; Christopher Divis, 20, a sophomore from San Diego; Ruth Levy, a student at Santa Barbara City College from San Francisco; and Elie Israel, 27, of San Francisco. Israel is a friend of Levy’s brother, Albert, who was critically injured but is expected to survive.

Flags on campus were lowered to half-staff. Student groups are organizing memorials, and handing out information on traffic services to avoid drunken driving. On Sunday, university and Santa Barbara County officials announced new plans to improve traffic circulation and safety in the Isla Vista neighborhood where Attias was driving.

The timing of the announcement was coincidental.

UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry T. Yang said: “Off-campus safety of our students is of paramount concern to us. This tragic event this weekend underscores the importance of our efforts in this regard.”

The men’s basketball team, after considering the cancellation of its game Saturday, played wearing black patches on their blue and gold uniforms. Yellow ribbons are being offered to faculty and students, and an open-microphone service is set for 4:30 p.m. Thursday in Storke Plaza.

The site of the collision has become a makeshift memorial to the students who died.

On Sunday morning Winifred Lubega, 19, walked there from the Francisco Torres dorm half a mile away. “When I heard it was Dave,” she said, “I couldn’t believe it was him.”

Later that night, family and friends of two victims, sophomores Bourdakis and Divis talked about their losses.

“We’ve been here paying our dues,” said friend Michael Webber, who gathered with other students at the site of the crash. Webber is a sophomore who grew up with Bourdakis in Alamo, a suburb of San Francisco. “It’s just an empty feeling. . . . I’ve kind of gotten over my crying stage, but when you come here and see this whole thing, it’s just really melancholy.”

Bourdakis and Divis met in their first year at school as dorm mates. The two quickly became friends. Webber recalled the three of them had grown closer in the last few months as they had learned cooking and apartment hunting.

“That was a big thing. We’d started cooking for ourselves. That was a new experience. I swear every weekend we’d hang out, cook and bond.”

“Chris was the smartest guy I knew,” Webber said of Divis. When Divis was not poring over physics problems, Webber said his friend loved skim-boarding, a type of reverse surfing, in which the rider follows the receding surf into the ocean. “He was just a really friendly guy,” Webber said.

Last Words With Parents

Bourdakis, an amateur pilot, had recently matured from an average student into an geology enthusiast. Divis, a top mechanical engineering student, loved the beach and foosball almost as much as his books.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Tony Bourdakis, Nicholas’ father. “I feel so helpless.’

As he prepared to leave for Santa Barbara, Bourdakis said he and his wife had last spoken to their son Friday, the day of the crash. “It was a wonderful conversation. He was so happy because he’d really found himself. He had been an average student his first year. And now he was telling his mother he was going to get three A’s and a B,” Bourdakis recalled.

Bourdakis said his son had always had a zest for life and an interest in helping others. As a teenager at Monta Vista High School, he trained guide dogs for the blind.

At 14 he received his first flying lesson and was hooked. “They had to put pillows under his seat to get him to reach everything,” Bourdakis said. At 17, Nicholas earned his pilot’s license. “You can’t get it any younger than that,” Bourdakis said.

“He made people happy. He made people laugh. He wouldn’t hurt a flea,” said Linda Pickering, Nicholas Bourdakis’ godmother.

“You tell your kids to be careful flying, not to drink, not to smoke,” she said, “and then they get killed crossing the street.”

Sally Divis said her son was drawn to the Santa Barbara campus because of the beauty of is surroundings and its small-town atmosphere. Like many parents of teenagers, Divis had talked repeatedly to her son about the dangers of drinking and driving.

“Maybe this tragedy will make some kids realize what can happen if they drink,” she said.

Divis last spoke with her son Thursday. A mature kid, he was inquiring about his tax returns from his summer job. “He was happy he’d get money back,” Divis said. “He was always thinking about the future.

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Times staff writers Ana Cholo, Erin Texeira, Joe Mathews and Tony Perry, correspondent Laura Wides and researcher John Jackson contributed to this story.