Ex-postal worker kills 5 at Calif. mail center

The last known address for Sanmarco, 44, was Grants, N.M. Why she came back to the facility Monday night with a semiautomatic 9mm pistol is still under investigation. Mass killings by women are rare.

A resident at Sanmarco's former condominium complex on Overpass Road, where she lived from 1998 to 2003, described her as difficult and inflexible when dealing with others. Sanmarco, who worked a night shift, pounded on the wall when neighbors took morning showers because the noise disturbed her.

''She was always talking to herself, but she didn't make any sense," said the woman, who asked not to be identified. ''Her sentences weren't structured. I didn't understand anything she said."

The neighbor said she went out of her way to avoid Sanmarco. ''She'd be walking in my direction and I'd cross the street," she said.

Sanmarco's rampage on Monday lasted just minutes. She shot two employees while in the parking lot, one by the front door, and three more inside before fatally shooting herself, authorities said.

Police have not determined whether she fired at random or had carefully selected her victims.

The Santa Barbara sheriff's office, the FBI, postal inspectors, and personnel from other agencies were scouring the 200,000-square-foot building for clues and interviewing the dozens of witnesses who had been shepherded by police to the safety of a fire station across the street.

The dead were identified by postal officials as Ze Fairchild, 37, of Santa Barbara; Dexter Shannon, 57, of Oxnard; Nicola Grant, 42, of Lompoc; Guadalupe Swartz, 42, of Lompoc; and Maleka Higgins, 28, of Santa Barbara.

The wounded employee was taken to Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara and identified as Charlotte Colton, 44, of Santa Barbara.

Goleta Mayor Jonny Wallis called the shootings -- the first such fatalities at a postal facility in eight years -- ''a shock to the soul."

''A day at the office," she said, ''should not result in death."

As officials tried yesterday to reconstruct Monday night's events, a grim picture of blood and terror took shape.