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Returning to the scenes of the crimes A day after the rampage, people regroup at the places that were terrorized Sunday, April 30, 2000 By Cindi Lash and Gene Collier, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
.Along the route of a killer, a merciful but eerie quiet yesterday enveloped the suburban stations of Friday's blood and horror and madness.
Just as it had 24 hours before, Virginia Manor lay in the dappled April sunshine of Mt. Lebanon. The house where 63-year-old Nicki Gordon took six or seven bullets was as serene as ever, its driveway hoop and backboard waiting in the breezy silence for its own unscheduled shoot-around.
Amid the blossoming dogwoods, neither 788 Elmspring Road nor the house next door would suggest the gateway to a rampage. Attorney William Difenderfer answered the door at the home of Richard Scott Baumhammers, who is accused of killing Gordon and four others in a 90-minute massacre that spanned two counties.
Difenderfer said Baumhammers' parents were in seclusion.
"They are devastated," Difenderfer said. "They are extremely distraught, probably more for the victims [than for their 34-year-old son]." He said they were especially stricken for the Gordon family. "They were very close."
In the parking lot astride Beth El Congregation off Cochran Road in Scott, the shooter's second stop in what authorities are calling a hate crime, a thicket of media awaited the conclusion of regular Saturday services. The front doors had been boarded up, covering the space where the gunman rained six or more shots into the smoked glass and painted two red swastikas just to the left of the entryway. A canvas tarp had been hung over that space, the swastikas not yet removed.
The complex, which houses a nursery school, was empty of children when the shooter arrived because pre-school had been canceled for the week in observance of Passover. The congregation's president had said Friday that students were in another part of the building when the shooting occurred, but corrected that error yesterday.
"I want to thank the politicians who continue to make it possible for mentally ill people to get guns," said Sara Davis Buss, a Mt. Lebanon attorney recently appointed to the Sports & Exhibition Authority who was waiting for her daughter outside yesterday's services. "Our politicians refuse to change our gun laws. So now we can thank them for incidents like this."
Her voice quaked.
Inside, some young boys perused a book fair, then decided to bolt upon the news that TV cameras were in the parking lot.
"Quick," one said, "let's go get on TV."
At Scott Towne Center, the shooter's next station, four young girls in a black Mercedes convertible cruised by the India Grocers store, where bouquets, cards and notes were piled against the door along with a hand-lettered sign that read: The Indian community comes together to strongly condemn the horrific shooting and prays for the speedy recovery of Sandip Patel.
On a sidewalk where the usual Saturday traffic carries people shopping for jasmine rice, almonds, figs, curry powder, and chutneys, customers found a locked door with the sign, "Close [sic] due to family emergency."
It was here that store manager Patel, 25, took a paralyzing shot to the neck, here that a bullet ripped the life from Anil Thakur, 31, a customer.
The shootings continued at Ahavath Achim Congregation in Carnegie, right at the busy corner of Chestnut and Lydia streets.
John Burke and his crew from Burke Glass of Butler, subcontracted by Disaster Restoration Services, were shoveling a million nuggets of bullet-shattered safety glass off the sidewalk. Burke pointed to a bullet hole in a pane of glass a half-story up from sidewalk, directly in front of an iron Menorah.
"I was talking to my daughter about this last night," Burke said. "When I came out to work here today, I had no idea it had to do with the shootings. It sure isn't the way we like to get work."
On the rear door of Ahavath Achim, notices remained for next week's Interfaith Holocaust Observance. Topic: "Is Our Civilization Only Skin Deep?"
In Robinson Town Centre, Murray Poole, a young black man and a Robert Morris College student who works at the Super Kmart, waited again for the 25A bus to Coraopolis. He'd done the same thing Friday, and he's glad the 25A wasn't too late.
"I saw the guy stop at the stop sign, then turn into the parking lot in front of the Chinese restaurant," Poole said of the suspected killer. "I didn't think anything. I was just looking at cars and then I got on the bus. But now, I don't know, it's crazy. If my bus was any later, it could have been me. I could have been one of the victims.
"You have to live your life, though. You can't tell what's going to happen. Just like the people in the restaurant. They didn't know that, in 30 seconds, someone was going to come in shooting."
On the door of Ya Fei Chinese Cuisine, an apology hung.
"Sorry, closed. Will re-open Monday 5/1/00."
The shooter had gone through this door Friday at about 2:30 and killed two employees in front of their customers. One was Ji-ye Sun, 34, of Churchill, the manager. The other was Thao Pham, 27, of Castle Shannon, a deliveryman.
Nine bouquets lay at the door yesterday, one placed by Julia Stewart, who'd walked by the restaurant Friday in the minutes after the attack.
"I do a lot of walking in this area every day," she said on the sidewalk. "I've eaten in there a couple of times. I just wanted to show support for their families."
A network news crew interviewed some shoppers in the area. Noting Friday's events as a second ethnic intimidation rampage within two months in the Pittsburgh area (suspect Ronald Taylor is accused of killing three and wounding two in a March 1 spree in Wilkinsburg), the questions seemed to run along a what-kind-of-place-is-this track.
From Robinson Town Centre, the gunman rode Route 60 toward Monaca, an interlude in the violence that had to take 25 minutes or more, though not long enough to alter his resolve. In the storefront at the C.S. Kim karate school in Center Township, Beaver County, Master Kim's 10 Articles of Faith are prominently displayed. No. 10 is, "Always Finish What You Start."
Inside, school master Marcus Murtaugh was cleaning the carpet, dark patches from the blood of Garry Lee still plainly visible. Lee, 22, of Aliquippa, died at that spot, his death the last before Baumhammers was arrested some 30 minutes later in Ambridge.
"The door was open, just like it is now," Murtaugh said from behind a small, wooden gate in the entryway. "I keep it open for ventilation.
"It makes the place look more inviting. But the [shooter] never came in. He never came closer to that seam in the sidewalk [three feet from the door]."
For Lee, like five others that afternoon, it was too close.
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