Combat veteran researched murder-suicide before Yountville shooting

The gunman who killed three clinicians at a Napa Valley veterans facility this year visited the site a day before the attack and propped open the ground-floor door that would give him access when he returned the next day, heavily armed and bent on violence, according to a newly released summary of a CHP investigation.

Albert Cheung Wong, a troubled combat veteran, had been working up to the bloodshed for at least several weeks, investigators found, purchasing one firearm after another, readying ammunition and laying groundwork for a siege at the Veterans Home of California in Yountville where he had previously been in treatment.

The investigation summary does not alter major components already assembled by authorities into the suspected motive and timeline of the March 9 siege. Much of that narrative was formally laid out last month in a report from the Napa County District Attorney’s Office, which reaffirmed that Wong acted alone.

But the CHP document includes chilling new details that further illustrate the premeditated nature of Wong’s attack and the grip that plans for deadly revenge had on his mind.

His act to prop open a basement door March 8 ensured he would be able to get into The Pathway Home treatment center where he was once a patient without an electronic keycard or contact with anyone in the building.

After he returned to his home in Sacramento, Wong stayed up all or most of the night surfing the most macabre corners of the web, according to search histories of digital equipment seized from his Sacramento home.

He clicked on pages with entries entitled “Overcoming the Fear of Lethal Injury” and “Murder-Suicide: When Killing Yourself is Not Enough.”

Finally, in the hour before he climbed into a rental car for his return to Yountville, he watched several videos - live footage of suicides marked “GRAPHIC” and “WARNING,” investigators say.

The heavily redacted report, 94 pages in all, relies as well on dispatch logs from March 9, and physical evidence and witness statements from the shooting scene that day.

Wong’s victims - executive director Christine Loeber, 48; Dr. Jennifer Golick, 42, a therapist; and Dr. Jennifer Gonzales Shushereba, 32, a psychologist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System - formed the clinical core of the now shuttered Pathway Home program. Gonzales Shushereba was seven months pregnant, and her unborn child died, as well.

Wong, 36, a former Army infantryman whose service included a year in Afghanistan, had been a patient at the 10-year-old program for nearly a year.

But he had run into conflict with the staff, bristling under its restrictions and policies. His brother said Wong was told to leave after he had been found with knives.

Officials have confirmed that Wong was asked to leave but say he left the program before his Feb. 20 discharge date - before arrangements for a handoff could be made that would allow for a supportive transition to some other treatment.

Instead, on Feb. 14, Wong went to Sweeney’s Sports in Napa and bought a Stoeger Industries double-barrel shotgun, according to the CHP report. He took possession of that gun Feb. 25, after the state-mandated 10-day waiting period.

But two days before, on ?Feb. 23, he bought a JP Enterprises .308-caliber assault rifle from Coyote Point Armory in Burlingame, taking possession of it on March 5.

The Napa County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement last month that Wong had threatened his intended targets multiple times, specifically saying he would kill them “by coming onto the premises and shooting them with a gun.”

When Wong arrived about 10:18 a.m. March 9 at the Pathway Home building he wielded gear familiar to him as a combat veteran: eye and ear protection, a “tactical-style rifle” in a “low ready” position, and the shotgun slung over his shoulder, with extra ammunition.

In less than two minutes he was in the second-floor room where staff members and a few clients were gathered to say goodbye to a staff member.

He dismissed three veterans and then four staff members, several of whom began calling authorities, the CHP reported. Internal security cameras captured footage of the survivors leaving the room, some of them running and several on cellphones.

One of the cameras was aimed through the open door and caught the moment Wong kicked it shut, closing him in with the three victims.

Gonzales Shushereba was captured on camera several times holding her stomach with both hands.

Napa County Sheriff’s Deputy Steven Lombardi was the first to arrive among the scores of responding law enforcement officers who would surround the complex for hours that day.

He was informed of Wong’s military experience, of reports he had an assault rifle and “lots of ammo,” and that he might have taken hostages in a building he knew well as a former patient.

Lombardi, a 26-year sheriff’s office veteran, “felt he was going into the situation at a disadvantage and did not think he was going to come out alive, but he knew he had to stop the threat based on his training,” the CHP report states.

A fleeing staff member let him in and Lombardi climbed the stairway alone, clearing several rooms before finding the one where Wong was holed up with the three women.

Pushing open the door, he saw a figure with a rifle pointed toward the ceiling. He took cover, thinking the situation might be static for the moment, the report says.

But that impression changed quickly, the sound of Wong readying his rifle to fire and a woman’s scream, prompting him to believe she was about to be shot, the report said.

He began firing through the door, and Wong returned fire at him, filling the air with white dust from the wallboard, according to the report.

Lombardi thought Wong was preparing to attack, and he fired additional rounds as he retreated toward the elevator to take cover. But he was met with silence that lasted for more than six minutes - until three deputies and four Napa police officers arrived to support him. By then, authorities believed the encounter had become a hostage situation, the report states.

It wasn’t until 5:45 p.m. that afternoon that an FBI SWAT robot was deployed to the second-floor room and was able to determine that all four people inside were dead.

Investigators say they believe after reviewing the security footage and the audio from Lombardi’s body camera, which had been knocked off, that Wong turned his gun on the three women moments after firing at Lombardi. Golick and Gonzalez Shushereba had been shot once each with the assault rifle. Loeber had been struck multiple times.

Wong shot himself in the head with the 12-gauge shotgun.

The CHP’s investigation was prompted by its jurisdiction over the 600-acre veterans’ campus, which is patrolled by the Sheriff’s Office under a contract with the city.

The Pathway Home was a residential treatment program that had been lauded over its 10-year existence for its work to help more than 450 veterans reintegrate into society.

It was suspended after the shooting and closed indefinitely this summer

A program spokesman, Larry Kamer, has said he did not know if and to whom Wong’s threats might have been reported. There were a variety of reasons they would not have been reported to the nonprofit board, including issues of patient confidentiality and others that surface when treating former servicemen and women dealing with serious trauma and brain injury.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter?@MaryCallahanB.