An out-of-work security guard whipped out a Glock semiautomatic gun and fired 54 rounds from a Fashion Island parking garage during the busy Christmas shopping season last December because “that's where the rich people were.”
That's according to court testimony this week by a Newport Beach police detective, who claims that's what destitute 42-year-old Marcos Sarinana Gurrola of Garden Grove told him.
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Marcos Sarinana Gurrola, Alleged Fashion Island Shooter, Faces Up to 115 Years in Prison
“He said firing the gun made him feel better,” testified Detective Garrett Fitzgerald, who added Gurrola was upset the day of the shooting over money he was awaiting from the state not arriving and having written checks he knew would bounce.
Gurrola, who is due back in Orange County Superior Court on Dec. 9, has pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault and shooting at an occupied building. He allegedly opened fire from the parking structure near Macy's on Dec. 15, a day after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre. Police are also investigating him for a November 2011 incident at tony Fashion Island, where someone fired 10 shots.
No one was struck in either shooting, although a woman was injured while trying to flee to safety last December, according to Deputy District Attorney Robert Mestman. That shooting spree indeed spread panic, as evidenced by the videos in this post:
[VIDEOS:] Fashion Island Shooting Horror Captured; More on Suspect Marcus Gurrola
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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.