Santa Monica mass murderer John Zawahri’s family had dark history of violence
- ️Mon Jun 10 2013
The twisted mass shooter whose bloody rampage claimed five victims in Santa Monica came from a home with a disturbing history of violence.
The father of mass murderer John Zawahri went berserk when his marriage crumbled in 1998 and made chilling threats to kill his wife and kids, court paperwork obtained by The Daily News revealed Monday.
“If I had a gun, it would be over,” Samir Zawahri screamed at his wife, Randa Abdou, during a workplace confrontation on April 26, 1998, Abdou said in a request for a restraining order five days after the incident.
Samir, 55, and his son Christopher Zawahri, 25, died Friday at the hands of John, who was one day shy of turning 24.
Abdou was in Lebanon visiting relatives but has returned to the U.S. and met with investigators, a neighbor told The News.
“She’s very sad and fragile, as any mother would be,” neighbor Beverly Meadows, 62, said after speaking with Abdou.
“She needs to be left alone to grieve. I can’t imagine in my worst nightmare having to go through something like this.”
College officials Monday identified a woman shot in the head outside the campus library as Margarita Gomez, a local resident and mother of two who regularly collected items for recycling.
Gomez, believed to be in her late 50s or early 60s, was a familiar and beloved figure on campus.
“She was just the nicest lady,” campus bookstore manager David Dever said in a statement released by the school.
“She would come by the bookstore regularly and always had a big smile for us.”
Officials also released details on the gunman’s college record, revealing that he studied gaming technology at the school.
They said he first attended classes in the winter of 2009 and left the school in fall of 2010. His classes were all in the “Entertainment and Technology” program, which primarily involves game design and digital animation. The college had no disciplinary issues with Zawahri, officials said.
It’s still not clear exactly why Zawahri killed his father and older brother in their family home before leaving the residence in flames and taking his terrifying shooting spree to the streets and to Santa Monica College nearby.
He died in a gun battle with police after mowing down his five victims in less than 15 minutes.
But the family’s domestic troubles are well-documented in Abdou’s 1998 restraining order request. She said Samir was waiting for her when she drove up to her restaurant job with a male friend in the passenger seat that day.
“The defendant seemed very angry,” the petite waitress and mother of two said in her court petition, referring to her husband.
“The defendant got into my car in the passenger seat and pulled my hair and punched me twice in the arm with a closed fist.”
She said Samir also grabbed her arm and “wrenched” three bracelets off her wrist.
He then took her purse and the divorce papers she had begun filling out and demanded that she follow him back to his house, according to her statement.
Her friend who had fled the scene minutes earlier alerted police, she said, and Samir himself fled shortly before cops arrived.
A few days later, on April 30, Samir purportedly showed up at Abdou’s apartment and threatened to take the couple’s two sons, then 8 and 10, to Canada.
“The defendant said that he would do anything to make my life miserable and that he could kill me and no restraining order can stop him,” Abdou said in her restraining order request.
Later that day, Samir allegedly collected the boys from school without Abdou’s knowledge and called with a terrifying message.
“I want to see them for the last time,” he told her on the phone, according to Abdou. “I can’t see them again and neither will you.”
The boys were back in school the next day, and she rushed to court for the restraining order, the paperwork reveals.
According to the filing, Abdou married Samir in Lebanon in 1985 and joined him in the U.S. after they spent their first five years as newlyweds apart.
She said they had “marital troubles” from the beginning, so she moved out of their Santa Monica house in February 1998 into a nearby apartment with the boys.
She said Samir refused to hand over her green card or the kids’ birth certificates and regularly visited her apartment without permission while she was at work.
“The defendant has told me that life means nothing to him if we are not together,” she wrote in the request for the stay-away order. “I am afraid that the defendant may do something drastic because he seems to become increasingly angry and frustrated over our separation.”
The restraining order was granted by a judge based on her statement, but Abdou canceled the petition a few weeks later.
Originally Published: June 10, 2013 at 3:47 PM EDT