Among the nine people slaughtered by Christopher Harper-Mercer–before he turned a gun on himself Oct. 1 at Umpqua Community College in Oregon–was a former Mission Viejo resident.
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“It is with deep grief in my heart that I must announce that Kim was one of the people killed yesterday at UCC,” the husband of 59-year-old Kim Dietz revealed via Facebook. She had been attending a lecture at the college when the gunman burst in.
Kim Dietz was employed at Pyrenees Vineyard N Cellars in Myrtle Creek, Oregon, where her husband Erik also works.
But Karen Crocker remembers Kim Dietz as a classmate at Mission Viejo High School. The Community Services director with the city of Aliso Viejo posted the following on Facebook:
Another friend, Heather Lynn Branaugh-Gilbert, has started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Dietz's daughter Shannon, who attends Umpqua Community College. “She was an awesome lady. I knew her well enough to know she would want us to make sure her daughter was taken care of,” Branaugh-Gilbert writes.
To learn more or simply give, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/kim-dietz.
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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.