Jimmy Schlager, 56, arrived at the Del Taco restaurant in
San Bernardino on a bike at about 1 p.m. Saturday, walked over to a table and
fired several shots at his 29-year-old stepdaughter, her 33-year-old husband,
and their sons, ages 5 and 6, San Bernardino police Lt. Jarrod Burguan said.
"There was a very brief exchange of words, then he
opened fire on them at near point-blank range," Burguan said.
The woman's husband was declared dead at the restaurant
and the 6-year-old died at a hospital, San Bernardino Fire Department spokesman
Steve Tracey said.
The woman and the 5-year-old boy were in critical
condition at Loma Linda University Medical Center, Tracey said. The names of
the victims were not released.
The woman's mother who was married to Schlager died
several years ago, and investigators were trying to determine how well Schlager
and his stepdaughter got along as police sought a motive for the shooting,
Burguan said.
Police said between five and seven employees and several
other customers were in the fast food restaurant, but the gunman clearly walked
in seeking the four victims and no one else was injured.
Bullet holes marked the walls and glass covered the floor.
Owners of nearby businesses said horrified patrons
streamed out of the restaurant after the shots were fired.
"I saw some people yelling and all of a sudden I
heard 'boom, boom, boom, boom'," Jorge Garcia, who works at a recycling
trailer in the same parking lot as the restaurant, told the Riverside
Press-Enterprise. "I saw two employees run out of the employee door and
then I saw eight or 10 people run out of the restaurant and across the
street." Schlager, who is from Lancaster in northern Los Angeles County,
had an extensive criminal record dating back to 1972 that included assault with
a deadly weapon and a restraining order taken out by a co-worker.
Despite living an hour's drive away, Schlager had many
ties to San Bernardino and once lived just a few blocks from the restaurant,
Burguan said.
Burguan said the attack on the family was one of the
worst crime scenes he could remember in San Bernardino, a city of about 200,000
people some 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
"This was something else," he said.
