7th shooting victim dies

GOLETA (AP) — A woman wounded in a rampage by a former postal worker died yesterday, and investigators said the assailant also killed a former neighbor just before the attack.

A former postal worker said the attacker, who killed herself after her rampage, had spewed racist comments in the past, and six of her victims were minorities, but investigators have refused to discuss a motive in the slayings.

One of seven victims, Beverly Graham, 54, was found Tuesday, dead of a gunshot wound to the head, at a Santa Barbara condominium complex where former postal employee Jennifer San Marco lived up until a few years ago.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Erik Raney said authorities think Miss Graham’s death was “the beginning of this rampage.” Investigators matched several 9 mm bullet casings found at Miss Graham’s condominium to casings from the postal distribution center.

A neighbor of Miss Graham’s reported hearing a gunshot Monday evening, before San Marco went to the mail-processing center and fatally shot six postal employees in what was thought to be the nation’s deadliest workplace shooting by a woman, authorities said.

A postal worker who was shot in the head, Charlotte Colton, 44, died of her wounds yesterday, said Teresa Rounds, spokeswoman for Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.

Former plant worker Jeff Tabala recalled that San Marco, who was white, seemed particularly hostile to Asians while working for the Postal Service. He said all the slain postal workers were ethnic minorities — three blacks, two Asians and one Hispanic. Miss Graham was white.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Anderson said officers took San Marco away from the postal center on Feb. 5, 2001, because “she was acting irrational.” She was held for three days at a psychiatric hospital, but the sheriff did not know whether any diagnosis was made.

Mr. Tabala said he watched deputies pull San Marco out from under a mail-sorting machine and wheel her away in handcuffs on a mail cart, but it was not clear whether that occurred separately from the 2001 incident.

She returned to the plant several months later but “people started coming to me and saying, ’She’s acting erratically,’” Mr. Tabala said. “She was screaming. She was saying a lot of racist comments. It was pretty ugly.”

Miss Graham’s boyfriend, Eddie Blomfield, said San Marco would often go outside singing loudly, which led to arguments between the women. Les Graham Jr. said his sister had complained about a woman who “used to come out and rant and rave in front of her building.”