Portraits of the Victims Show Struggles for a Better Life, Bereft Relatives

One night last week, Derek Glimstad was having a heart-to-heart talk with his father about life and death, about faith and the hereafter.

Emphasizing his unwavering belief in God, the 19-year-old Sacramento college student declared that he wasn’t afraid to die, his sister Casey recalled Monday.

“He said he didn’t want to go. That he wasn’t ready,” Casey said. “But he said he wasn’t afraid.”

Days later, Glimstad was one of five victims slain in a weekend rampage that left Sacramento shaken. Glimstad, a Calvary Church member who planned a career in law enforcement, was gunned down at a city-run boat dock where he had recently begun working nights so he could take--and teach--morning tennis lessons.

His story, of a young man who was such a straight arrow that family members say he refused to even drive faster than the speed limit, was one of many told through tears Monday.

Marsha Jackson, 32, was one of the first to die Saturday, shot down with alleged gunman Joseph Ferguson’s ex-girlfriend, Nina Susu, 20, in the first minutes of the rampage.

A single mother of three, Jackson was a fixture at Burns Security, working day and night except Sundays, when, friends say, she put on a bright dress, combed back her hair and went to church.

“She’d sit on her porch and play guitar when little kids came by,” said former neighbor Isaac Cherry, 34. “She would give them some candy and preach from the Bible.”

Until a month ago, Jackson had lived in the same rundown Sacramento apartment complex as Cherry, a low-slung compound of concrete where cars sit without tires and the pool has no water.

The security guard job was the ticket out for Jackson and her children, a son in high school and two girls, ages 11 and 12.

Even with the potential risks, she stuck with the job.

“She knew it was dangerous and she didn’t like doing it,” Cherry said. “But she had to do it to feed her children.”

Outside the south Sacramento home of Burns guard George Nague Bernardino, shot at the dock with Glimstad, Bernardino’s sister said her family was too shocked to speak.

At 48, Bernardino fit the archetype of a security guard and former military man with a solid build and short-cropped hair. Serious but friendly, he was a devoted family man, Fudge said.

Often, she saw Bernardino and his wife--his high school sweetheart Carmelita--working together in their yard. He cut the grass, she tended the roses.

Last year, the neighbor recalled, Bernardino came to her home to console her on the death of her husband. Just let me know, he told her, if you need anything.

In the suburb of Elk Grove, Glimstad’s 23-year-old sister said her parents, John and Suzanne, were too distraught to talk.

Quiet and caring, Glimstad was in his second year at Cosumnes River College, Casey said, having recently decided to forgo a career in computers and instead become a police officer.

The decision, she said, was one he had struggled with, not because of the dangers of being a police officer but out of concern at the moral challenges it could present.

“He was one of those people who really tried to follow what he learned at church,” Casey said.

On the other side of town, Mihai Susu could not believe how the violence had stolen away his oldest daughter, Nina. Three years ago, Susu said, he arrived here from Moldavia, in Eastern Europe, taking a job at Burns Security and preparing for the arrival of Nina and her younger sister, Anastasia.

Soon, he met and befriended another Burns guard, Nikolay Popovich, who also was from Moldavia, and helped him with English. Popovich, 28, was gunned down by Ferguson.

A onetime law student who spoke five languages, Nina Susu joined her father at the security firm. Recently, she had taken business classes and, because of her bitter breakup with Ferguson, had decided to join the Navy, her father said.

Now, he said, his anguished daughter Anastasia is returning to Europe to live with her mother. Though he will reside in the U.S., Susu said, he will accompany her on the trip.

“I have to take Nina home for the funeral,” he said.