- October 13, 2021
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It seems like another lifetime yet the pain still scorches.
Ten years ago, at 1 p.m. Oct. 12, 2011, an angry man walked into a Seal Beach hair salon carrying three handguns. Over the next 21 minutes, he shot nine people – even as some begged for their lives.
Eight would die, including his ex-wife.
It was the worst mass shooting in the history of Orange County. Others would follow.
The massacre rocked the quiet, beach-casual community to the core – taking mothers from children, children from parents and spouses from their other halves.
Some worked in the salon and some were customers enjoying a day of beauty. One man was simply sitting in his car in the parking lot, outside his favorite lunch spot. All were loved – and now missed – by shocked families and friends they left behind.
On Tuesday evening, Oct. 12, some 200 survivors, neighbors and city officials gathered in a park by the pier to commemorate the terrible day. Still in mourning, family members hugged and cried as they once again bumped into each other.
“It does not seem like 10 years have gone by,” said Lisa Fast, 25, whose mom, Michele Fast, died in the shooting.
“It still feels like it just happened yesterday. I think of all the things my mom has missed – graduations from high school and college, my sister’s wedding, her granddaughter’s birth. She would have made the best grandmother.”
Sandy Fannin, right, whose husband Randy was killed in the shooting at the Salon Meritage gives a tearful embrace to Gordon Gallego, a stylist at Salon Meritage who survived the attack, during a vigil at Eisenhower Park in Seal Beach on Tuesday, October 12, 2021 to commemorate the 10-year-anniversary of the Salon Meritage mass shooting that killed 8 people. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Hattie Stretz, second from left, who survived being shot at Salon Meritage, is embraced a vigil at Eisenhower Park in Seal Beach on Tuesday, October 12, 2021 to commemorate the 10-year-anniversary of the Salon Meritage mass shooting that killed 8 people. Hattie’s husband, Tom is at right. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Family and friends gather to mourn and remember during a vigil at Eisenhower Park in Seal Beach on Tuesday, October 12, 2021 to commemorate the 10-year-anniversary of the Salon Meritage mass shooting that killed 8 people. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Family members toss flowers into the ocean from the Seal Beach Pier in Seal Beach on Tuesday, October 12, 2021 in memory of the 8 people that lost their lives in the the Salon Meritage mass shooting at the conclusion of a vigil for the victims. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Gordon Gallego, right, a stylist at Salon Meritage who survived the attack, is embraced during a vigil at Eisenhower Park in Seal Beach on Tuesday, October 12, 2021 to commemorate the 10-year-anniversary of the Salon Meritage mass shooting that killed 8 people. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Family and friends attend a vigil at Eisenhower Park in Seal Beach on Tuesday, October 12, 2021 to commemorate the 10-year-anniversary of the Salon Meritage mass shooting that killed 8 people. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Paul Wilson, whose wife Christy Wilson, was killed in the mass shooting at the Salon Meritage, is overcome with emotion during a vigil at Eisenhower Park in Seal Beach on Tuesday, October 12, 2021 to commemorate the 10-year-anniversary of the Salon Meritage mass shooting that killed 8 people. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
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Loved ones took turns eulogizing those they lost. Then, as the sun set over the ocean, they lit candles in a show of unity and hope.
Many of the families left behind have become close friends, sharing a pain only they can understand. and enduring a drawn-out murder trial together.
Scott Evans Dekraai, who pleaded guilty to the shootings, was sentenced in 2017 to eight terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The case dragged on as evidence mounted showing widespread misuse of jailhouse informants by local prosecutors and sheriff’s deputies. Due to that misconduct, Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals eventually ruled out capital punishment for Dekraai.
But Dekraai, his name unmentioned in speeches, was not the one people came to remember.
This photo combo shows the people who were killed during a shooting at a salon at Seal Beach, Calif., on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011. On the top row, from left, are Michelle Fournier, Michele Fast, David Caouette and Christy Lynn Wilson. On bottom row, from left are Laura Lee Elody, Lucia Bernice Kondas, Victoria Ann Buzzo and Randy Lee Fannin. (AP Photo)
Then 73, Hattie Stretz was the lone shooting victim who survived the gunman’s rampage. Her daughter, Laura Webb Elody, who worked at the salon, died.
“I do not know how the oldest one shot was the only to survive,” Stretz said in her speech, adding that the others “must be proudly looking down on this wonderful community.”
Salon employee Gordon Gallego also survived by hiding in a restroom with coworker Lisa Powers, who died last year of cancer.
“I am still waiting to wake up from this nightmare,” he said. “I have relived that horrible day every day for the past 10 years – the panic, the sounds, the smells I cannot describe. Those are scars on my brain.”
He remembered hearing salon owner Randy Lee Fannin, ever protective of his staff, “trying to talk some sense” into the gunman” to no avail.
Gallego lovingly named his coworkers who died, telling a funny and sweet anecdote about each.
Christy Lynn Wilson “wore a signature fragrance that was so Christy, and she always looked like a million bucks,” Gallego recalled.
“Sweet, sweet Laura” Elody made birthday cakes for her colleagues.
And Michelle Fournier, Dekraai’s ex-wife, was constantly optimistic, “even when her life got tough.”
“She was the strongest of us all,” Gallego said.
Seal Beach Police Chief Phil Gonshak, who was then an officer, found David Caouette wounded in his car and accompanied him to the hospital. “He wanted me to tell his family how much he loved them,” Gonshak remembered. “I was with Dave as he took his last breath.”
Rooney Daschbach said his sister, Michele Fast, the youngest of six, was their dad’s favorite. He said their father “died of a broken heart” two months after his daughter’s death.
“It’s exponential how this has impacted all of our families,” he said.
Famously down-to-earth, Fast went to a hair salon no more than twice a year, Daschbach said, “and this happened.”
“Eight innocent people got up that morning and had plans,” said Donald Shoemaker, a volunteer chaplain for the Seal Beach Police Department who counseled families in the aftermath. “They had things they needed to do or wanted to do or, above all, had the right to do.”
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