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6/11/13, "Official: Police once found bomb-making materials in Santa Monica gunman's home," AP via deseretnews.com
"Police found bomb-making materials seven years ago in the home of
the gunman who killed five people last week in Santa Monica, a school
board official said on Tuesday.
Police discovered the materials after John Zawahri
threatened fellow high school students in 2006, Oscar de la Torre, a
member of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified school board, told The
Associated Press.
The board was briefed by school administrators after
police found Zawahri was learning to make explosives by downloading
instructions from YouTube, de la Torre said.
"It was some type of devices or materials that would
be able to make explosives, and the word 'pipe bombs' was what was
referred to," he said. "If it was guns and stuff like that it would have
been more serious, but because it was explosives, it wasn't deemed 'Oh
my God,' just that this guy had a fascination."
The revelation came four days after authorities said Zawahri shot and
killed five people during a 15-minute rampage that ended on a Southern
California college campus as students were taking final exams.
Zawahri, 23, shot his father, Samir Zawahri, and his
brother, Christopher Zawahri, on Friday, leaving their home in flames
before shooting at strangers in cars and at Santa Monica College.
The former student at the school was heavily armed
and carried a duffel bag with 1,300 rounds of ammunition before officers
killed him in the campus library.
De la Torre, who was a neighbor of Zawahri, said the
gunman's father told him he was having problems with his son eight
months ago.
"They didn't talk to a lot of people, they were very
reserved," de la Torre said. "One time he did tell me he had problems
with his younger son, knowing I work with youth. He never went into
detail about anything."
The victims also included Carlos Navarro Franco, 68, and his daughter
Marcela Franco, 26. They were gunned down as he pulled his vehicle out
of a parking lot at the college, where he worked as a landscaper and she
was a student.
Also killed was Margarita Gomez, 68, of Santa Monica, a nonstudent who was shot outside the library. Investigators were trying to determine whether problems in the Zawahri family played a role in the killings.
Zawahri's mother, Randa Abdou, said in court filings
in 1998 that her husband threatened her and became abusive five years
into their marriage when she moved from Lebanon to join him in the U.S. Abdou also said her husband had threatened to take
their two young sons to Canada after the couple separated at the time,
and that he once punched her and stole her jewelry, purse and divorce
papers she had started filling out. Abdou has not spoken to the media.
Police say Zawahri had contact with officers in 2006 but wouldn't divulge details because he was a juvenile.
John Zawahri enrolled at Santa Monica College in the
winter of 2009 and last attended in fall 2010, taking classes in the
entertainment technology program, which involves video game design,
animation and computer skills for digital media, the college said in a
statement that also reported no disciplinary issues with Zawahri.
Neighbors have described Zawahri as reclusive and said his 55-year-old father was friendly though not overly social.
Zawahri's parents married in 1985, and in the
mid-1990s his father brought his family to the Santa Monica neighborhood
of small homes and apartment buildings tucked up against Interstate 10,
according to property records. A neighbor said the couples had a
difficult divorce and one son went to live with the father and the other
with the mother." via Lucianne
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