5 Killed; Heavily Armed Man Sought

Another California killing rampage sent police swarming the county Sunday for a heavily armed man they said gunned down five people after vowing to outdo a mass killer who struck the capital less than three weeks ago.

Police said the suspected gunman, 20-year-old Burns security guard Joseph Ferguson, appeared girded for battle, packing a cache of high-powered weapons and a satchel of pipe bomb components and wearing a bulletproof vest.

Ferguson apparently was despondent over the breakup with his girlfriend--another employee at Burns Security who was one of the victims--and recent problems at work, where he was suspended a week ago. Burns Security pulled about 150 employees off the job for their protection, prompting some businesses and institutions--including the Crocker Art Museum--to close for the day.

Police said during his killing rampage Ferguson took the wife of a victim hostage, holding her from 3 a.m. Sunday until 9 p.m., when she phoned police to report her husband’s death.

She told police that the suspect, garbed in black, fled in her 1997 Nissan Altima. Her husband was a supervisor at Burns Security, said Sgt. James Lewis of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.

Officers swarmed the area, but failed to track down the stolen car.

The multiple murders and manhunt are the second in Sacramento in less than three weeks and follow similar slayings in suburban areas of the state, among them the shooting of five family members in Simi Valley, the Santa Clarita Valley shooting of a sheriff’s deputy assisting in serving a search warrant, and two March school shootings in the San Diego suburbs. And in San Francisco on Sunday, four members of a family were found dead of gunshot wounds.

Sacramento police said Ferguson, a gun aficionado with a penchant for white supremacist paraphernalia, made cell phone calls Saturday night to former co-workers, threatening to kill them and vowing to outdo Nikolay Soltys, a Ukrainian immigrant who was charged with seven deaths from a shooting rampage last month in Sacramento County.

“We’re living another nightmare here in Sacramento,” said Arthur Balizan, an FBI special agent helping a coalition of local, state and federal law enforcement units hunting for Ferguson.

Investigators were looking into the possibility that race might have played some role in Ferguson’s selection of victims. One of the dead was African American, another Asian.

Police scoured Sacramento County with squad cars and helicopters, much as they had for 10 days during the hunt for Soltys.

“Our fear is there may be somebody else on his hit list we don’t know about,” said Lt. Sam Somers of the Sacramento police. “He’s in possession of a lot of weaponry. He’s armed and he isn’t in a very good mental state right now.”

Local authorities joined with the security company and state to post a $130,000 reward for information leading to Ferguson’s capture.

Ferguson, a lanky 6-foot-1 with a shaved head, had handguns and long rifles with him, and Ferguson’s father told police “numerous weapons” were missing from the home the two shared. He was wearing a black T-shirt and black fatigues during the alleged shootings and is believed to be armed with two 9-millimeter handguns, two rifles and a shotgun.

Investigators found Nazi flags, hate literature and other white supremacist paraphernalia during a search of Ferguson’s home. Authorities said Ferguson had no criminal record.

The latest rampage started shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday at a Sacramento city maintenance yard, where two Burns Security employees were sprayed with gunfire and left to bleed to death. Police found a 9-millimeter handgun and an abandoned Chevrolet El Camino. A Burns Security pickup truck was missing.

One of the victims there, 20-year-old Nina Susu, was Ferguson’s ex-girlfriend, the daughter of Romanian immigrants. Her parents were taken into protective custody early Sunday by police. A law enforcement source said Susu’s vehicle was vandalized by Ferguson shortly after their breakup. She reported it to Burns officials, and Ferguson was suspended. The other victim, a 32-year-old woman employed by Burns, was not identified pending notification of her relatives.

Police suspect Ferguson then drove a couple miles to a marina at Miller Park along the Sacramento River, where he shot and killed two men, a 48-year-old George Bernardino, a Burns security guard, and John Derek Glimstad, 19, an employee just hired at the city-run boat dock. An assault rifle was discovered by police as they scoured the marina for clues.

Next, police said, Ferguson headed to the Sacramento Zoo, where Burns guard Dianne Pfouts, 33, was working her regular 4:30 p.m.-to-12:30 a.m. shift. She was the only guard on duty, zoo officials said. He rammed his pickup truck through a back service entrance gate. Once on the grounds, zoo officials said, he handcuffed Pfouts to a slender tree in front of the wallaroo and emu exhibits, then stole her green Toyota Tercel.

Officials made the decision to open the zoo at 10 a.m., as normal, after a SWAT team covered the grounds and declared it safe, said zoo veterinarian Ray Wack.

News of the shootings didn’t scare zoo-goers away. Wack estimated a crowd of 3,500 by midafternoon. Pfouts, a longtime and well-liked guard at the zoo, was not injured, but zoo employees were concerned nonetheless, Wack said.

All the victims were unarmed and riddled with gunshot wounds, said Sgt. Daniel Hahn of the Sacramento police. Police found assault rifle rounds, shotgun cartridges and 9-millimeter handgun shells at the crime scenes.

On Sunday morning, police and federal ATF agents swarmed outside the brown, single-story home where Ferguson lived with his father and a brother on Kirk Way, in a working-class neighborhood in south Sacramento.

Iron bars cover the windows, barbed wire circles the perimeter of the fence, and the owners have a yellow sign posted with a picture of a Doberman that warned: “I can make it to the fence in 2.8 seconds. Can you?”

Police said they found a considerable number of guns at the house, most of them belonging to the father, a gun collector. The search Sunday uncovered an array of weapons including two assault rifles, two shotguns, two revolvers, a helmet, a flak jacket and a gas mask.

They said Ferguson’s father was cooperating with the investigation. Neighbors gathered along the street, some peering past yellow crime scene tape through binoculars to watch as authorities made their way carefully into the house to make sure the suspect was not hiding inside.

Lonnie Basped, who lives next door, was recovering from the shock of returning home around midnight to find police surrounding his home. “They said, ‘Either get in the house or get your family and get out--there’s a suspect on the loose and he’s dangerous!’ ” Basped said. He piled his wife and five children into the car and they drove to a relative’s home for the night, he said.

A neighbor, Al Veirs, said he has known the family since they moved in nearly two decades ago, described them as good people who have lived through troubled times.

“I never thought he had it in him to go off like that,” Veirs said. “He’s a security guard, protecting people and making sure everything’s cool. It’s just unreal. It just doesn’t fit him as far as I know.”

A law enforcement source said that Ferguson’s mother, Susan, was incarcerated at Chowchilla state prison for abusing the two brothers. Viers said the boys’ father has been trying to keep their lives on track.

The latest rampage comes less than three weeks after Nikolay Soltys allegedly slashed his pregnant wife’s throat, then killed his aunt and uncle and their two 9-year-old grandchildren. He fled with his 3-year-old son, found dead a day later in a cardboard box. Soltys is in custody.

Lyubov Soltys and her son were buried Sunday in the western Ukraine town of Shumsk. The other victims were buried in California. Other rage murders have spread in a haunting succession this year in suburban California spots unaccustomed to such violence.

The most recent was Wednesday’s point-blank shooting of five family members in Simi Valley, two of whom died.

The shooter, Reynaldo Herrera Rodriguez, a 35-year-old Caltrans engineer, was reportedly irate over a breakup and was targeting his ex-girlfriend, Maria Calderon, who was not at the home when he entered, police said. A two-day manhunt ended Friday when law enforcement officers tracked Rodriguez to a Los Padres National Forest campsite, where he killed himself with a gunshot to the head.

Less than a week before, a well-armed man opened fire on U.S. marshals trying to serve a search warrant on his Santa Clarita Valley home, and a sheriff’s deputy was killed in the ensuing siege.

James Allen Beck had amassed an array of weaponry and bragged he was a U.S. marshal. But increasingly suspicious neighbors checked his credentials and alerted police. When U.S. marshals tried to serve a warrant on his home Aug. 31, they were met by gunfire.

On April 11, a man about to be evicted from a church-run home for seniors in Chula Vista killed three people before turning his gun on himself. And in March, two school shootings 17 days apart shocked two eastern San Diego suburbs.

Two students were killed and 13 wounded at Santana High School in Santee when first-year student Charles “Andy” Williams, 15, allegedly opened fire on them on March 5.

On March 22, Jason Hoffman, an 18-year-old senior, allegedly shot and wounded five students at Granite Hills High School, in El Cajon.

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Times staff writers Robin Fields, Geoffrey Mohan and Julie Tamaki contributed to this story