Thread: BLOODBATH at Immigration Center in NY!!

UPDATE from L.A. TIMES

"Paulus Lukas, human resources manager for Kikka Sushi in Inglewood, CA. said Jiverly Wong worked for the company as a deliveryman for nearly seven years, until July 2007. Kikka Sushi is a caterer serving supermarkets and corporate and school cafeterias.

Wong was a good worker, Lukas said, but quiet. It was only in talking to co-workers Friday afternoon, Lukas said, that he learned Wong was Vietnamese.

When the staff at Kikka heard about the shootings, Lukas said, "we didn't really think this person could do such a thing. He was really good at doing his job -- we respected him for that. He's never late, he's always punctual. And when he finishes his job, he goes home. He doesn't complain, he doesn't argue with people. He gets along."

The only blemish he could recall was that Wong sometimes drove the company van too fast. But after being reprimanded, Lukas said, he improved his driving.

He said that Wong earned $9 an hour by the end of his employment, and that he never formally quit but just failed to show up for work one day, leaving co-workers speculating about what might have happened. In early 2008, Lukas said, Wong called to ask that his W-2 forms be sent to an address in New York state."

Apr 4, 1:45 PM EDT

Police chief: Binghamton gunman wore body armor

By WILLIAM KATES
Associated Press Writer
AP Photo
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BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) -- The gunman who killed 13 people in a rampage at an immigrant community center and then committed suicide was wearing body armor, indicating he was prepared to do battle with law enforcers, the Binghamton police chief said Saturday.

The gunman, 41-year-old Jiverly Wong, had been taking classes at the American Civic Association, which helps immigrants assimilate, until last month, Police Chief Joseph Zikuski said.

Wong parked his car against the back door of the community center, burst through the front doors and shot two receptionists, killing one, and then took most of his victims in a classroom.

The receptionist who survived played dead, then called 911 despite her injuries and stayed on the line while the gunman remained in the building, the police chief said.

"He must have been a coward," Zikuski said, speculating that when he decided to turn the gun on himself when he heard sirens.

"He had a lot of ammunition on him, so thank God before more lives were lost, he decided to do that," Zikuski said.

He earlier called the receptionist, 61-year-old Shirley DeLucia, a "hero in her own right."

Wong had a permit for the two handguns he used, and most of the victims had multiple gunshot wounds, Zikuski said. The body armor indicates that "at one point in his thinking process that he was going to take the police on or at least try to stop us from stopping him."

The gunman's actions were no surprise to Wong's family, the chief said. Wong, who used the alias Jiverly Voong, believed people close to him were making fun of him for his poor English language skills, he said.

Wong was ethnically Chinese but from Vietnam, a friend said Saturday. He was angry about recently losing a job at a Shop-Vac assembly plant, couldn't find other work and complained that his unemployment checks were only $200 a week, said Hue Huynh, a Binghamton grocery store proprietor whose husband worked with Wong years ago.

Wong, who moved to the United States in the early 1990s, had driven a truck in California before recently returning to Binghamton, only to lose a job there, Huynh said.

"He's upset he don't have a job here. He come back and want to work," she said. Her husband tried to cheer him by telling him he was still young and there was plenty of time to find work, but he complained about his "bad luck," she said.

On Friday, Wong barricaded the American Civic Association community center's back door with his car, walked in the front and started shooting with two handguns. Within minutes, a receptionist, a teacher and 11 immigrants taking a citizenship class were dead.

DeLucia feigned death after she was shot and called 911 to get police to the scene within two minutes. Zikuski said the injured receptionist stayed on the phone for 90 minutes, "feeding us information constantly," despite a serious wound to the abdomen.

DeLucia was in critical condition at a hospital Saturday, along with another victim in the same condition and another in serious condition. A fourth victim was in stable condition at another hospital.

Thirty-seven others made it out, including 26 who hid in a basement boiler room while police tried to determine whether the gunman was still alive and whether he was holding any hostages, Zikuski said.

The chief defended the time it took officers to go into the building - an hour to 90 minutes.

"If some crazy lunatic decides to pick up a gun and go someplace and start shooting people, I really don't have the answer how long for us that could prevent anything like that," Zikuski said.

"What I will tell you is that the police did the right thing," he said. "We have procedures and protocols."

Investigators said they had yet to establish a firm motive for the shooting, which was followed Saturday by the killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by a man reportedly fearful about a potential ban on guns.

At least 44 people have died in mass shootings nationwide in the past month. The Binghamton shooting was the nation's deadliest since April 2007, when 32 people and a gunman died at Virginia Tech.

Wong was found dead in an office with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a satchel containing ammunition slung around his neck, authorities said.

Police found two handguns - a 9 mm and a .45-caliber - and a hunting knife. Both guns are listed on a permit he obtained in 1996 or 1997, Zikuski said.

State police got tips suggesting that Wong may have been planning a bank robbery in 1999, possibly to support a crack-cocaine addiction, Zikuski said. But the robbery never happened, and Zikuski had no other information.

The attack at the American Civic Association, which helps immigrants settle in this country, came just after 10 a.m. as people from all over the globe - Latin America, China, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Africa - gathered for English and citizenship lessons in an effort to become a bigger part of their new home.

Abdelhak Ettouri, a Moroccan immigrant who lives in nearby Johnson City, told the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin he found the back door locked when he tried to flee, then ran to hide in the basement as he heard 12 to 14 shots: "Tak-tak-tak-tak."

Hoi Nguyen of Binghamton said his 36-year-old daughter Phuong Nguyen, who survived the massacre, was taking an English class in the basement when the gunfire started.

"She said it sounded like a firecracker and everyone in the class was startled," he said. "Then the teacher locked the door, called the police, then told everyone they couldn't leave the room."

The shootings took place in a neighborhood of homes and small businesses in downtown Binghamton, a city of about 47,000 situated 140 miles northwest of New York City.

The region was the home to Endicott-Johnson shoe company and the birthplace of IBM, which between them employed tens of thousands of workers before the shoe company closed a decade ago and IBM downsized in recent years.

---

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Michael Hill, John Kekis and Michael Rubinkam in Binghamton; Carolyn Thompson and John Wawrow in Buffalo, N.Y.; Jessica M. Pasko, George M. Walsh and Chris Carola in Albany; Ben Dobbin in Rochester, N.Y.; Daisy Nguyen in Los Angeles; and the AP News Information Research Center in New York.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/ ... TE=DEFAULT

Originally Posted by cvangel

Police found two handguns - a 9 mm and a .45-caliber - and a hunting knife.

So he actually used a handgun. At first they said "high powered rifle". Next it was "sophisticated automatic weapon". Maybe those reports were wishful thinking by people wanting to ban "assault rifles"?

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Originally Posted by StokeyBob

They may jump on it but the fact remains that through their efforts of the past everyone is pretty much unarmed now and at the mercy of anyone that wants to shoot at them.

THERE ARE MORE GUNS IN AMERICA THAN PEOPLE

blog.mindviz.com/blog.php?f=tipanna&p=1914 - 14k - Cached - Similar pages

So what? It's also a fact that guns prevent more crime than they cause!
If only a few of the people involved in this event had concealed carry permits they could have stopped this killer before he took the lives of all those innocent people!

Originally Posted by MountainDog

So what? It's also a fact that guns prevent more crime than they cause!
If only a few of the people involved in this event had concealed carry permits they could have stopped this killer before he took the lives of all those innocent people!

I agree but I bet this was a "gun free zone", that's where all these mass killings take place. It's a dumb policy if you ask me. For example a woman in Colorado stopped a mass church killing because she was armed. If they allowed CCW holders to carry their gun in these buildings, we would not have these mass shootings.

Both guns are listed on a permit he obtained in 1996 or 1997, Zikuski said.

The whole thing is really confusing. He has aliases, he came in the '90s. How did he obtain a gun permit? Had he been here long enough to become a citizen? Was he even legally here? How much fraud might have been committed? Too many questions right now

Originally Posted by cvangel

Both guns are listed on a permit he obtained in 1996 or 1997, Zikuski said.

The whole thing is really confusing. He has aliases, he came in the '90s. How did he obtain a gun permit? Had he been here long enough to become a citizen? Was he even legally here? How much fraud might have been committed? Too many questions right now :?

All of the recent articles say that he was a naturalized U.S. citizen.
That makes it legal for him to buy and own guns.
It is not illegal to use an "assumed name" or an "alias" as long as you have no intent to commit fraud.
Movie stars and rock stars do it all of the time.
Many legally change their names later to protect their right to that new name.

As gunman's life fell apart, he took others'
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated Press
April 4, 2009, 3:37PM


— BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — Jiverly Wong was upset over losing his job at a vacuum plant, didn't like people picking on him for his limited English and once angrily told a co-worker, "America sucks."
It remains unclear exactly why the Vietnamese immigrant strapped on a bulletproof vest, barged in on a citizenship class and killed 13 people and himself, but the police chief says he knows one thing for sure: "He must have been a coward."
Jiverly Wong had apparently been preparing for a gun battle with police but changed course and decided to turn the gun on himself when he heard sirens approaching, Chief Joseph Zikuski said Saturday.
"He had a lot of ammunition on him, so thank God before more lives were lost, he decided to do that," the chief said.
Police and Wong's acquaintances portrayed him as an angry, troubled man who struggled with drugs and job loss and perhaps blamed his adopted country for his troubles. His rampage "was not a surprise" to those who knew him, Zikuski said.
Wong, who used the alias Jiverly Voong, believed people close to him were making fun of him for his poor English language skills, the chief said. But police said the motive still wasn't clear.
Until last month, he had been taking classes at the American Civic Association, which helps immigrants assimilate.
Then, on Friday, he parked his car against the back door of the association, burst through the front doors and shot two receptionists, killing one, before moving on to a classroom where he claimed 12 more victims, police said.
The police chief said that most of the dead had multiple gunshot wounds. Wong used two handguns for which he had obtained a permit more than a decade ago.
The receptionist who survived, 61-year-old Shirley DeLucia, played dead, then called 911 despite her injuries and stayed on the line while the gunman remained in the building.
DeLucia was in critical condition Saturday. The police chief said she and three other shooting victims were all expected to survive.
Wong's tactics — including the body armor and copious ammunition — fit him into a category of killers called "pseudo-commandos," said Park Dietz, a criminologist and forensic psychiatrist at UCLA who analyzed the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado in 1999.
Barricading the back doors to trap his prey "was his way of ensuring that he could maximize his kill rate," Dietz said. "This was all about anger, paranoia, and desperation."
The road that took Wong to his demise in a classroom at the American Civic Association in downtown Binghamton began 41 years ago and half a world away in Vietnam, where he was born into an ethnically Chinese family.
He moved to the States in the early 1990s and soon afterward became a citizen, friends and relatives said. He worked at IBM for a time, friend Hue Huynh said, but decided to move to California.
There, he worked for seven years at a caterer called Kikka Sushi, eventually making $9 an hour, said Paulus Lukas, the company's human resources manager.
"He was really good at doing his job — we respected him for that," Lukas told the Los Angeles Times. "He's never late, he's always punctual. And when he finishes his job, he goes home. He doesn't complain, he doesn't argue with people. He gets along."
But one day he simply didn't show up for work, Lukas told the Times. Early last year, he called asking the company to send his tax forms to a New York state address.
Back in New York, he apparently worked at the Shop-Vac plant in Binghamton. Former co-worker Kevin Greene told the Daily News of New York that Wong once said, in answer to whether he liked the New York Yankees, "No, I don't like that team. I don't like America. America sucks."
The plant closed in November, and Wong was out of a job. That's apparently when things really started to go downhill.
"People who end up doing this particular thing have an accumulation of stressers in their lives, and ultimately there is the one that broke the camel's back," Dietz said. "Job loss is one of the big ones, and those stressers are happening more often this year."
Huynh, the 56-year-old proprietor of an Asian grocery store in Binghamton frequented by the gunman's sister, ran into Wong at the gym recently and noted that he was complaining about how he couldn't find work.
His unemployment benefits were only $200 a week, and he lamented his bad luck, she said.
"He's upset he don't have a job here. He come back and want to work," Huynh said. Her husband tried to cheer him up by saying that he was still young and had plenty of time to find work.
Wong's story is similar to how friends were describing the recent trials of a man accused of opening fire on Pittsburgh police officers during a domestic dispute Saturday, killing three of them. They said he had recently been upset about losing his job; police say that, like Wong, he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
The Binghamton police chief said Saturday that those who were close to Wong weren't surprised to see his eventual meltdown.
A woman reached at the home who identified herself as Wong's sister told The Associated Press late Friday she did not believe he was the gunman. "I think somebody involved, not him," she said.
That's not an unusual response, Dietz said.
"What will be revealed if the investigation goes deep enough is that many people in a shooter's world knew that he was angry, mad, unreasonable, scary at times, and recently some of them came to learn that he was threatening and armed," said Dietz, who is not involved in the Binghamton investigation.
"They've known that for a long time, but none of them did what they should have done with that information."
State police got tips suggesting that Wong may have been planning a bank robbery in 1999, possibly to support a crack-cocaine addiction, Zikuski said. But the robbery never happened, and Zikuski had no other information.
Wong's father was well-known in the Binghamton area through his work years ago at the now-defunct World Relief Organization, helping recent immigrants find a doctor and obtain food stamps.
"Everyone, when they come to America, he's the one who helps," said Ty Tran, who came to the United States in 1990.
Mark Preston, 48, a neighbor of the gunman in Johnson City, outside Binghamton, said people in the family keep to themselves but often tended the bushes in their yard.
"They grow great vegetables and roses," he said.
___
Associated Press writers John Wawrow in Buffalo, N.Y., and John Kekis in Binghamton contributed to this report.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/ ... 58977.html

Gunman's Actions Not a Surprise to Those Close to Him
Police Chief: Shooter Came Prepared for Altercation With Police
By KI MAE HEUSSNER

April 4, 2009 —

The police chief in Binghamton, N.Y., dismissed as "a coward" the man he said killed 13 people and himself during a shooting rampage at an upstate New York immigrant center Friday, adding that those who knew the suspect were not completely surprised at his violent outburst.

Jiverly A. Wong, 41, a Vietnamese-American who police said also used the last name Voong, arrived Friday at Binghamton's American Civic Association with guns, extra ammunition and wearing body armor, Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski said. But he evidently killed himself before police arrived.

"He must have been a coward," Zikuski added. "He must have heard the sirens, we speculate, when he decided to take his own life."

Police are still not sure of the motive, but family and friends indicated that Wong was upset about losing a job at the company Shop-Vac and felt he was "being degraded" because of his inability to speak English well, Zikuski said.

Actions Not a Total Shock

Wong was unmarried but lived with his father, mother and sister in Union, N.Y., Zikuski said. Until the first week in March, when he apparently dropped out, he was a student at the immigrant center.

Wong had worked in Binghamton for Shop-Vac, but was laid off in November, investigators learned.

Wong had not shared his intentions with those close to him, but Zikuski said that to those who knew him well, Wong's behavior yesterday "wasn't a total shock."

Because Wong had been wearing body armor at the time of the shooting, police think he may have anticipated an altercation with them, though he evidently chose suicide instead, Zikuski said.

Shirley DeLucia, the receptionist who placed a 911 phone call to police after pretending to be dead, might have prevented additional slayings, Zikuski said.

"I'd describe her as a hero," he said.

The police chief added that all four victims of the rampage who had earlier been listed in critical condition are expected to survive.

Officials have not identified the victims who were killed but expect to release a full list of victims by the end of the night.

Civic Association 'Stricken With Grief'

Angela Leach, president of American Civic Association, said the organization was stricken with grief but would continue to work with the community and "come out of our sadness more resolute in our mision to help people realize the dream of American citizenship."

"Every ounce of our energies, caring and compassion is going to help those who are suffering," she said.

Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan said leaders of the 40,000-person community are working with local and state agencies to investigate the incident and support the families. He added that nine countries and two consulates have reached out to offer assistance.

Earlier, Ryan told ABC News, "You'll see this community mourn and grieve. But they'll come back and be strong. We have a very strong immigrant population. We honor them and we'll mourn with them and make sure that we move forward."

Ryan said the community is a planning a city-wide vigil for later in the weekend.

Shooting Over Within Minutes

Officials have said Wong entered the one-story American Civic Association in downtown Binghamton at 10:31 a.m. on Friday.

Within minutes, the shooting was over and 14 people -- including the gunman -- lay dead.

Wong entered the civic association armed with two pistols -- a 9 mm and a .45 caliber handgun. A satchel around the gunman's neck carried high-capacity magazines, a survival knife and a flashlight, according to police.

He allegedly burst into the civic center wearing a bright green nylon jacket and dark-rimmed glasses and promptly shot two female receptionists.

Most of the people killed or injured were in one classroom taking a citizenship exam.

The police chief said 37 people were safely removed from the building, 26 of whom barricaded themselves in the building's boiler room.

Police arrived just two minutes after the receptionist called 911. Though the shooting lasted only minutes, it took police three hours to make sure the shooter wasn't still alive and laying in wait for more victims.

Sister Stunned at News of Shooting

When the carnage was over, Wong's body was found with a hunting knife jammed into the waistband of his pants.

"He shot those people? No. No," said a woman who identified herself as Voong's sister but would not give her name when reached by ABCNews.com Friday.

She said her brother went to take classes Friday at the civic association and that she had not heard from him since. She said she did not know that he was involved in the shooting.

"I'm going to pass out," she said, and hung up the phone.

A neighbor who lived on the same block as Voong and his family described the family as "quiet" and said they mostly kept to themselves.

"They were nice people," said the neighbor, who identified herself only as Darlene. "They were good neighbors."

Obama Comments on Shooting

People were told in nearby buildings to stay away from windows, and Binghamton High School was under a lockdown as police used the school as a staging area. The school is a block-and-a-half away from the shooting site.

President Obama gave a statement from the NATO summit he was attending in France.

"I am heartbroken for the families who survived this tragedy," he said. "And it just underscores the degree to which, in each of our countries, we have to guard against the kind of senseless violence that the tragedy represents."

New York Gov. David Paterson called the shooting "the worst tragedy and senseless crime in the history of the city."

"We all just have profound sorrow and sadness," he said.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7256239&page=1

In countries where people are not allowed to freely posess guns, like England(an island) and Mexico, only the criminals have them.

In countries where people can't afford them or don't have access to them, people still kill. They are hacked to death with Machetes, stoned, burned with acid, run down with animals, thrown off of cliffs, pushed into wells... and the ways and means are endless. They even commit mass murder, without a shot being fired. Poison, toxins, contamination, sabotage of mass transit... and even with a hijacked plane.

I hate to quotes clichés but "guns don't kill people, people kill people."

Dixie