When it gets dark in Stockton, the streets of the 320,000-inhabitant city in California empty quickly. For the past few days, everyone has been avoiding leaving the house as soon as dusk falls. And those who absolutely have to be on the go will try everything to avoid being alone. Because anyone who is currently walking the streets of Stockton unaccompanied at night is risking nothing less than their life. At least that’s how it feels now that everyone knows there’s a serial killer circling the city about 80 miles east of San Francisco. Presumably a man who kills indiscriminately. Because there is not much in common between the victims, all of whom were shot: They were alone, on foot and it was night.
It is also striking that four of the seven victims so far who have been assigned to the perpetrator were homeless, including a woman who was shot in her tent but was the only one who survived. Five of the victims were Latinos. But to conclude that the shooter is on a crusade against the homeless of Latin American origin is not enough. For one thing, the San Francisco area is experiencing a veritable homelessness crisis with thousands eking out a living on roadsides and in parks, and for another, Stockton is a city with a high Latino population (43.5 percent according to the U.S. Census Bureau).
“We’re a very diverse city, about half the population is Latino, so it’s hard to tell if it’s a hate crime or a random act,” said Ines Ruiz-Huston, vice president of the nonprofit El Concilio California, of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. Still, it’s said that Latinos and the homeless in particular say: “It feels like we have targets on our backs.” Homeless people are therefore increasingly looking for public shelters, looking for shared sleeping places and arming themselves with sticks and stones in the hope of being able to put the perpetrators to flee in an emergency.
So far, the police have not been able to say too much about the person. A washed-out, dark figure in a hooded sweatshirt with a slightly sloping gait is suspected and was caught by surveillance cameras. The survivor also only reports of a person dressed in black with a corona mask. Actually, the man on the videos is just a “person of interest,” as the police say, someone who could only turn out to be a suspect during further investigations. “We don’t have much to work with,” admits police spokesman Joe Silva. $125,000 has been offered for information.
The five murders, which took place north of the city between July 8 and September 27, have long been viewed as isolated cases. It was only in the past week that it turned into the actions of a single perpetrator. A number of similarities between the cases in terms of the ballistics tests, police put it, got investigators thinking. “It definitely fits the definition of a serial killer,” Silva told AFP. The ballistic anomalies are also what have now led the investigators to a murder in Oakland – another city in the Bay Area. This is said to have happened last year.
Not for the first time, the people of Stockton live in fear of a serial killer. The city is the administrative center of San Joaquin County, where the so-called Speed Freak Killers murdered up to 19 people in the 1980s and 1990s – the exact number has not yet been determined. The murderous duo owes their name to their methamphetamine abuse. They were convicted and convicted of four murders, three of which are proven to have been committed together. One of the two perpetrators, Loren Herzog, sentenced to 78 years in prison, took his own life ten years ago. The second, Wesley Shermantine, is still awaiting execution in San Quentin Jail.
It’s not the violence itself that worries the residents of Stockton, there have always been murders here, a 65-year-old tells the “Chronicle”, and after all it’s good if everyone knows and can be on their guard. “We’re used to shots being fired at night, that’s just the way it is here,” says a 24-year-old woman who is having a picnic with a friend in a park. “But a maniac who randomly shoots people, that’s different. That’s a bit scarier.”
For 62-year-old Renea Debudey, the situation is far more dramatic. Not only is she scared, she lost her son to the unknown killer. Two bullets killed the 43-year-old man near a restaurant late in the evening in August. “Everybody’s scared to go anywhere, especially after dark because there’s someone killing people for no reason,” she told The Chronicle. “I mean, someone just walks up to people and shoots them.” And then she poses the nagging question that I think everyone in Stockton is asking right now: “Which one of us will be next?”
Sources: Stockton Police; “San Francisco Chronicle”; AFP news agency
