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Wilkinsburg victims linked only by color and chance
Friday, March 03, 2000 By Robert Dvorchak, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
What haunts Candy Zambo is the randomness of it, how the everyday routine was shattered by five pulls of the trigger in a little over five minutes that bloodied five lives.
"We were just sitting there," said Zambo, 30, the mother of two who was with handyman Richard Clinger when he was wounded outside a Wilkinsburg McDonald's. "We were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Zambo and Clinger were on their way to buy a pipe-fitting part at a hardware store so they could finish a plumbing job for a client in Swissvale, but she needed to use the restroom first.
After she walked out of the McDonald's, she was about to light up a cigarette while Clinger made calls on his cell phone. Without warning, a man strode up to the driver's side window of Clinger's Dodge minivan, parked at the front door of the fast-food restaurant.
There was a pop -- "like a firecracker" -- and a .22-caliber slug penetrated the window and lodged in Clinger's brain.
As she ran for help, a shaken Zambo glanced over her shoulder to see the gunman enter McDonald's.
"He was walking like he was on a Sunday stroll, like nothing had happened," Zambo recalled yesterday.
"You see this kind of stuff on the news, and you say, 'Thank God, that's nobody I knew,' " said Zambo. "If we had been there one minute later....If I had thought we were in any danger..."
Wednesday's trail of mayhem that punctured a community's heart linked four other victims by a blind stroke of chance. In all, three are dead and two are in critical condition at UPMC Presbyterian.
In addition to Clinger, those who found themselves in harm's way included a carpenter who had just finished putting a new door on the suspected gunman's apartment; a former Catholic priest sipping coffee like he did every day at his regular booth in a Burger King; the assistant manager of the McDonald's gearing up for the lunchtime crush; and a young supercomputing wizard awaiting his drive-through order while sitting in the fire-engine-red car he loved.
They were unrelated except they were white males, targeted on the spur of the moment by a disturbed, brooding loner living off a government check who harbored a roiling hatred for whites in his heart. He punctuated his bullets with racial epithets.
The first to fall, the first to die, was John Kroll, 55, the father of three and a skilled carpenter from Butler County who was stowing his tools in his pickup truck. He had helped replace the door of the accused's apartment No. 510 in the Woodside Garden Apartments in Wilkinsburg.
"Try to think of the nicest guy you know and double that and that's John Kroll," said Patrick Connelly, an executive of Delta Property Management, where Kroll worked for the past 18 years. "He was of gentle manner and demeanor, friendly to everyone, calm and relaxed. He was as dependable as anybody we've ever had work for us."
Kelli McClung of Delta's office in Shaler called him "a good, innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time. We're heartbroken to have lost him."
Joseph Healy
Every weekday, Joseph Healy's routine drew him to Burger King, where he arrived at 10:30 a.m., ordered a regular cup of coffee and always took the same seat -- the last booth facing the counter, next to a big window that overlooked Pitt Street. He usually stayed for an hour, as comfortable there as he was at home, sipping his coffee and savoring his conversations with customers.
"He was part of the restaurant," said Jim Stover, vice president of Burger King franchises in the Pittsburgh area.
All the regulars speculate that Healy's perch would have made him a noticeable target for the gunman, who walked through the door and shot him at point-blank range at 11:20 a.m. Healy, 71, was the second to fall and the second to die. Had it been 10 minutes later, he probably would have been on his way, making his rounds.
Friends say that Healy, a former Catholic priest and professional storyteller who was married to a local woman, would be chagrined at the reports that his murder was tinged with the crackle of racism.
"I never met a man who was less full of hate than Joe," said Scott Pavelle, a lawyer from Ross and a fellow storyteller.
Burger King closed after the murder. It may reopen Saturday. Stover, though, said it will never be the same without Healy in his regular spot.
Richard Clinger
Candy Zambo had some free time and a baby-sitter on Tuesday. So as she occasionally did, she went out on a job with Richard Clinger, her mother's live-in boyfriend.
Clinger's business card carries icons of a hammer, saw, wrench, light bulb power drill and water faucet, along with the slogan: "A name you can trust at a price you can afford. One call does it all."
Part way through a plumbing job at a Swissvale apartment, they left to purchase a part and stopped for a break at McDonald's.
"I had to go to the bathroom," said Zambo, of North Huntingdon.
When she returned to the van, Zambo saw a man walking beneath the underpass of the East Busway separating the Burger King and McDonald's. It looked like he was carrying a newspaper; Zambo noticed a black revolver only after it was too late.
"He walked up and shot Richard right through the window. I never in a million years thought he would do that. I heard a shot, ducked my head down and then jumped out of the truck and ran like a bat out of hell to Dunkin' Donuts."
The doughnut shop is just down Penn Avenue from the McDonald's, and Zambo, gripped with fear, ran to call for help.
"I didn't know if he was going to continue shooting or not. I was very scared. I ran over there screaming. Somebody walks up and shoots somebody through the truck window, you don't know what he's going to do next," Zambo said.
Inside Dunkin' Donuts, Zambo hid and vowed to stay put until an armed police officer arrived. What happened next disturbed her more than she already was.
Zambo said a female Wilkinsburg police officer took her into custody.
"I identified who I was. But she frisked me, handcuffed me and threw me in the back of a police car. I was considered a suspect. I know the situation was very confusing, but I think that's a little extreme. I was in shock. I was shaking. It was scatterbrained to handle it that way."
Wilkinsburg Police Chief Gerald Brewer said it was an honest mix-up in a chaotic situation. He said the woman was freed as soon as her role as a witness became clear.
"We didn't know what we had. She was running and screaming," Brewer said. "We didn't know who was involved at that point."
Clinger, 56, remained in critical condition last night at Presby.
Zambo, whose husband, Joseph, was killed in an accidental shooting 18 months ago, called Clinger "the sweetest, kindest person in the world. He'd do anything for anybody. Just a real nice guy. He called my two kids his grandkids."
Steven Bostard
Inside the McDonald's, assistant manager Steven Bostard, 25, of Swissvale was waiting on customers and getting ready for the lunchtime orders of Happy Meals, McNuggets and fries.
When the gunman entered the front door and stepped behind the counter, Bostard asked if he needed some help, according to Henry Smith, 23, of Penn Hills, one of Bostard's co-workers.
The gunman replied by shooting Bostard in the right side of the head at close range. Smith, who is black and was not harmed, said the gunman turned and walked out into the parking lot.
Bostard, a 1993 graduate of Woodland Hills High School, remained in critical condition at Presby last night.
McDonald's provided crisis counseling for its workers from 1 to 3 p.m. yesterday before re-opening for business.
Bostard, who has worked for McDonald's for about three years, was "friendly and real nice," Smith said. "He got along with all the employees."
Bostard's relatives said the family declined to comment about the shooting.
Emil Sanielevici
A 20-year-old junior physics major at the University of Pittsburgh, Emil Sanielevici had placed his order at McDonald's and was in the drive-through lane. But the energetic, problem-solving honor student never drove off in his red Honda; the gunman arrived before his food.
Shot in the head at point-blank range, Sanielevici died at 6:15 last night in UPMC Presbyterian.
He had moved to Pittsburgh from Nova Scotia in 1995 with his father, Sergiu, a physicist who was the assistant director of scientific applications at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center in Oakland.
Emil, his father and his grandmother, Elizabeth, lived in a well-kept, orange-brick home adorned with neat flower beds in Greenfield, across Hazelwood Avenue from Calvary Cemetery. His mother, who is divorced from his father, remained in Canada with his older brother, Alex, but rushed here after hearing of the shooting.
An honor student who took advanced-placement classes, Sanielevici attended Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill.
After graduating in 1997, Sanielovici enrolled at Pitt, where he advanced quickly through his courses. He worked part time and during the summers at the Supercomputing Center, where he stood out for his work ethic and his academic skills. He was so promising as a student that, in June, he was one of two local college students chosen to ask a question of Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates while Gates testified before Congress.
Sanielevici also followed the stock market. He was particularly tickled when a stock he liked -- Osicom, a California-based telecommunications networking company -- took off a few weeks ago.
Most of his classmates and colleagues learned of his grave wound yesterday when they were stunned to receive an e-mail about the shooting from his father. What they recalled was that he never saw a bad side to anything.
"There was always a way to fix things or to put them in a positive light," said Ken Hackworth, his supervisor at the Supercomputing Center. "Even when finals or a project got really tough, he'd laugh and say, 'I'll study, don't worry,' or 'I'll work it out.' "
Allderdice Spanish teacher Eileen Swazuk said Sanielevici was a people magnet and a quiet leader when he and nine other students went on a spring-break tour of Spain, France and Italy in 1997.
"Everyone wanted to be around him," Swazuk said. "Nothing was ever a problem for him."
Outside of school and work, Sanielevici's primary interest was his red Honda, given to him by his father in the fall. He had planned to soup up the engine and loved to show it off.
"He was going through his first-car experience. He was truly smitten," said Beverly Clayton, executive director of the Supercomputing Center.
She recalled Sanielevici as a quiet student who was bright and well-liked.
"We enjoyed him very much," she said just hours before he died, "and we're all extremely upset."
Friends weren't sure why Sanielevici was at the McDonald's on Wednesday, or if he attended his scheduled physics class earlier that morning. But they figured he was probably getting lunch on his way to visit friends in the East End.
By some fluke of fate, he was the fifth to fall and the third to die. It was pure random chance that he encountered a gunman.
Staff writers Karen Kane, Milan Simonich, Mike Bucsko and Cindi Lash contributed to this report.
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