SANTA ANA, Calif. — Prosecutors didn’t take long to decide that the man they say went on a deadly shooting rampage at a Southern California salon deserves to die.
First, they said, Scott Dekraai wrapped himself in body armor and armed himself with three handguns. Then, he burst into the salon where his ex-wife worked — their 8-year-old son waiting miles away at his elementary school for one of them to pick him up.
Over two minutes, prosecutors said, Dekraai moved methodically through the salon, killing his ex-wife and seven others as he shot his victims in the head and chest. They said he wanted revenge against his ex-wife, with whom he fought over the custody of their son.
The boy learned of the shootings at the school, said prosecutor Tony Rackackaus, wiping away a tear and pausing to compose himself at a news conference Friday.
“That little boy’s a victim,” Rackackaus said. “Now, his mother has been murdered, and he has to grow up knowing that his dad is a mass murderer. So what kind of sick, twisted fatherly love might that be?”
Dekraai appeared briefly in court Friday afternoon, where angry friends and relatives of the victims screamed insults.
Superior Court Judge Erick Larsh ordered a medical review after Dekraai’s attorney said he wasn’t getting his needed medications while being held in jail without bail.
Attorney Robert Curtis said he would likely request that the trial be moved out of the area.
Prosecutors often spend weeks weighing mitigating circumstances before deciding to seek the death penalty. Rackackaus said he reached his decision in less than 48 hours because there was no reason to look for such factors in this case.
“There are some cases that are so depraved, so callous and so malignant that there is only one punishment that might have any chance of fitting the crime,” said Rackackaus, the Orange County district attorney.
The crime, the worst in Seal Beach’s 96-year history, has shaken the tight-knit seaside city of 24,000 that many residents call Mayberry by the Sea. Until this week, it had only one homicide in four years. The crime reported most often last year was larceny.
“The reason for this rampage? Revenge,” Rackackaus said. Dekraai “committed this unimaginable act of violence because he wanted to kill his ex-wife.”
