SANTA MONICA, Calif. — A woman who was critically wounded in the Santa Monica shooting rampage died Sunday, bringing the total number of victims killed by the gunman to five.
Marcela Franco, 26, died of her injuries at UCLA Medical Center, according to Santa Monica College spokeswoman Tricia Ramos.
Franco had been a passenger in a Ford Explorer driven by her father, campus groundskeeper Carlos Navarro Franco, 68, who also was killed in Friday’s attack. They were going to the school to buy textbooks for classes the young woman was enrolled in for the summer, president Chui L. Tsang said in a statement posted on the college’s website.
“Her family was with her by her side” when she died, Tsang said.
Police Sgt. Richard Lewis confirmed the suspect’s identity Sunday as John Zawahri. Meanwhile, investigators trying to determine why the 23-year-old planned the shooting focused on a deadly act of domestic violence that touched off the mayhem.
The heavily armed man’s slaying of his father and older brother at their home led to the violence in the Santa Monica streets, which lasted just a matter of minutes before Zawahri was shot to death by police in a chaotic scene at the college library.
Authorities had not immediately named the shooter or the two men found dead in the house because the next of kin was out of the country and hadn’t been notified. Lewis said Zawahri’s name was released Sunday after his mother cut her trip short.
Lewis said she was being interviewed by investigators. “A big piece of the puzzle just came home,” he said.
Meanwhile, the husband of Debra Lynn Fine, 50, said a bullet nicked his wife’s ear and she’ll likely have to live with shrapnel in her shoulder.
Bullets missed his wife’s vital organs by inches, Russell Fine told The Associated Press on Sunday.
She was resting at home.
