This article has been updated.
SAN JOSE — After a gunman killed two of his family members and mortally wounded two others, his wife, daughter and other relatives fled for their lives from the house on Habbitts Court, seeking safe haven in their neighbors’ homes.
The suspected shooter, who by the end of night would be deemed responsible for one of the deadliest shootings in San Jose history, eventually pointed the gun at himself and fired his final fatal shot, police said.
The San Jose Police Department confirmed Monday that three women and two men died in what homicide detectives are investigating as a quadruple murder-suicide driven by family conflict.
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Next-door neighbor Alan Bui was in his backyard with his young son, helping the boy assemble a Transformer toy the child had gotten for his birthday, when Bui heard arguing followed by a rapid succession of pops that the neighbor said sounded like firecrackers.
“So basically I heard gunshots, and I took my kid and my wife into the master bedroom and hid. But I accidentally left the sliding door open,” Bui said Monday afternoon. “The wife jumped the fence and ran into my house, and then she locked the door in my kid’s room.”
None of the victims was immediately named by authorities Monday, pending their formal identification and notification of their next of kin. The killings marked the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th homicides in San Jose this year.
The suspect has been identified through law-enforcement sources and neighbors as 66-year-old Chi Dinh Ta. His wife and daughter were among several family members who were able to escape the home after the gunfire began.
Ta has no criminal history in Santa Clara County outside of a 1998 misdemeanor DUI conviction that has since been purged from his record. A public-records search did turn up a criminal history in Orange County that consists of citations and unspecified charges for which records were not immediately available. Property records list him as an owner of the home where the shootings occurred.
A motive for the family massacre remains unknown, at least publicly. Police said the suspect has no known history of domestic violence. It also remains unclear how Ta obtained the semiautomatic pistol he reportedly used in the shootings, as he has no firearms registered in his name.
According to police and dispatch recordings archived online, San Jose police received several reports of gunfire at around 8:30 p.m. Sunday, with at least one person mentioning “six gunshots and subjects in a verbal” altercation on Habbitts Court, a cul-de-sac street off Umbarger Road near Senter Road.
Bui, 47, said he ran outside to close other doors to his home and saw the suspect standing in the street.
“I saw him asking, looking for his wife,” Bui said.
The suspect’s wife was one of many people in the neighborhood who called 911 in the wake of the shootings, with dispatch recordings revealing her description of fleeing the home where shots were fired.
“The wife confirmed she witnessed her husband shoot her brother and her sister,” the dispatcher broadcast to responding officers Sunday night.
Police received later reports of more gunfire and of other people in the home fleeing gunshots and similarly finding safe haven in their neighbors’ homes.
San Jose police spokeswoman Officer Gina Tepoorten said officers responding to the 911 calls immediately encountered a hectic scene on Habbitts Court, with family members fleeing from the suspect’s home. The front door was open, giving police a direct view inside.
Sgt. Enrique Garcia added that “officers observed a victim down in the front room of the residence, and could see that the victim was still moving.” A second wounded person, also still alive, was also seen in the front room, police discovered.
While keeping watch for the gunman, police staged a methodical rescue mission. Officers from patrol and the METRO special-enforcement unit used a Bearcat armored vehicle to provide cover, and swiftly entered the home and carried out the wounded victims to the Bearcat, and took them to safety.
The man and woman who had been shot were transported to the hospital, but died from their injuries soon after, Tepoorten said.
As officers surrounded the residence, the MERGE unit — SJPD’s version of SWAT — and the department’s Tactical Negotiation Unit tried to contact the shooter and assess whether more people were inside, Tepoorten said. At that point, two people who had reportedly been in the home were still unaccounted for.
The suspect did not respond to attempts to reach him and was thought to have possibly barricaded himself inside the home, police said. But at least one responding officer, while speaking to dispatchers, raised the possibility that Ta might already have been wounded or dead when they arrived. Police confirmed Monday that no gunshots were fired after officers got to the scene.
Ta was confirmed dead around 1:25 a.m. Monday, after officers entered the home and found the suspected shooter in the side yard, killed from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Officers also discovered the bodies of the two women who had not been accounted for, police said.
Bui, the next-door neighbor, said he did not witness anything in the family’s dynamic, at least outwardly, that foreshadowed such a tragedy. He remembered Ta as friendly and generous with sharing fish he caught using the boat seen parked in the family’s driveway Monday.
“Shock. That’s the only thing I say,” Bui said. “He’s a very nice guy. When I come home from work he says ‘Hi’ to me and I say ‘Hi’ to him. When he goes fishing, he catches fish and just drops it off.”
Sunday’s killings marked the South Bay’s deadliest shooting since March 2009, when Devan Kalathat fatally shot his 11-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, his brother-in-law and his wife, and their 11-month-old daughter, before killing himself at a Santa Clara townhome. Kalathat’s wife was severely wounded but survived.
Anyone with information about the case can contact SJPD Detective Sgt. T.J. Lewis or Detective Brian Meeker at 408-277-5283 or leave a tip with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-STOP or at svcrimestoppers.org.
Staff writers Thy Vo and Kaitlyn Bartley contributed to this report.
Update: June 25, 2019
This article has been updated to include a more detailed account of the SJPD rescue effort.
