Mass killing all too familiar in scenic college town of Isla Vista
Mass killing all too familiar in scenic college town of Isla Vista
UCSB is renowned as a
school on the beach, and as such, it's one of the most beautiful
campuses in America, caressed by cool Pacific breezes. Just 100 miles
from Los Angeles, Santa Barbara also attracts weekend crowds seeking a
getaway. Its main street features boutiques and eateries in stylish
Spanish mission architecture.
Now the college town and its adjacent Isla Vista community are home to the latest mass shooting, in which seven people were killed, including the gunman who fired into Isla Vista crowds Friday night while driving his black BMW.
Photos: Shooting rampage in California town
It was the second mass killing involving a driver in Isla Vista in 13 years.
Dense knot of students
Isla Vista is the
residential quarter for students mostly enrolled in UCSB and some in
Santa Barbara City College. The community sits on beachfront bluffs just
west of UCSB and offers off-campus apartments where students commonly
double up in one bedroom.
In fact, Isla Vista holds
legend status as the mostly densely populated square mile in
California. Its streets prove the student presence: they're lined with
bicycles. Isla Vista is an unincorporated community of 20,000 people --
13,000 of them are students -- in Santa Barbara County, the county says. Its size is actually a half-square mile, or 320 acres, the county adds.
Friday night's mass
shooting occurred on an weekend evening when Isla Vista is typically
jammed with students moving shoulder-to-shoulder from one party to
another.
On Saturday morning, however, Isla Vista was a massive crime scene.
Pizzerias, delis, cafes
and convenience stores downtown were lined with yellow police tapes
zigzagging everywhere -- because the drive-by gunman apparently fired
upon several places while in motion.
Bullet casings lay scattered on the street, and storefront windows were shattered.
2001 mass killing
As grisly as it was, the setting wasn't the first time that Isla Vista has known a mass killing, especially by a motorist.
In 2001, David Attias,
son of film director Daniel Attias, ran over five people in Isla Vista,
killing four of them, and exclaimed he was the "angel of death."
Attias was convicted of
four murders in 2002, but a jury later ruled him not guilty by reason of
insanity. Attias was then sent to a California mental hospital.
In Friday night's
deaths, witnesses -- largely of college student age -- thought the
events were a prank at first, involving a fake gun firing pellets.
Sounded like fireworks
Sienna Schwartz learned quickly that the weapon was real.
She saw the gunman driving by her and then felt the whoosh of a bullet passing her skin.
"He, like, lifted up a
little black pistol and, like, I just thought it was an Airsoft gun or
something, so I was like, hey, what up?" she said, becoming tearful as
she recounted the experience.
"And I turned around and
I started walking the other way," she said, choking on emotion. "He
shot, and I felt, like, I just felt the wind pass right by my face."
Summer Young said she
was walking down the street and heard what sounded like fireworks set
off by students. "People get stupid out here sometimes," she said.
But the pops were gunfire, and the car passed her, she learned.
"He was just firing up shots," Young said.
Another witness, Cayla
Bergman, a UCSB student, also described the bangs as fireworks. "We're
used to loud noises around here," she said.
But then the crowds went into a panic.
"A bunch of people from outside just started running into the store," Bergman said.
Culled From CNN
Mass killing all too familiar in scenic college town of Isla Vista
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