How much did an Election Day murderer earn from the City of Garden Grove?
$64,680.20 a year in salary, or $101,337.51 annually when you factor in health insurance and benefits, according to online records for 2015 for 45-year-old Carlos F. Mendez.
He's the city street-maintenance worker who binged on cocaine Monday night, Nov. 7, and then around noon the next day—which was Tuesday's election—walked out the door of a house in a quiet Azusa neighborhood and fired a gun at random cars and people.
Unfortunately, there were more of both than usual because of the home's proximity to polling places. Mendez shot a woman in a van, causing it to crash and her to suffer critical injuries.
He shot and killed a 77-year-old man who had walked out of his house to see what was causing the commotion.
Mendez shot another woman who was standing outside, critically injuring her.
The gun enthusiast's unstable behavior the night before had caused his wife and two children to leave their Azusa home.
After the shootings, Mendez retreated into the house and stayed there for several hours of intense police negotiations before he was ultimately shot and killed.
Inside, police found a shotgun, a handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Garden Grove's Public Works Department described Mendez as a good worker who never caused any problems.
Until Election Day, of course.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.