Goleta postal facility shootings

The Goleta postal facility shootings were a spree killing perpetrated by Jennifer San Marco on January 30, 2006. San Marco, a former U.S. Postal Service employee, shot and killed six people in Goleta, California, before taking her own life. Prior to the Goleta shooting, she shot and killed a former neighbor in nearby Santa Barbara.

On January 30, 2006, San Marco drove to her former Santa Barbara condominium and killed Beverly Graham, a former neighbor with whom she had previously argued. She then drove to the mail processing plant in Goleta, California. San Marco entered the sprawling plant's lot by tailgating another car as it passed through the gate. She gained entry to the building by taking an employee's identification badge at gunpoint in order to gain electronic access to the secure staff entrance. She then told the employee to leave. They were unharmed.

San Marco's car broke down in Grants, New Mexico in 2004 and she decided to stay and reside there until the shooting. In the small town of Grants, she earned a reputation for strange behavior, which included speaking (or sometimes furiously shouting) to herself, ordering food at restaurants and bolting out the door before eating it, stripping naked in public (often in random parking lots), kneeling and praying in random places (often roadsides), talking to an imaginary friend, screaming death threats, yelling profane rap lyrics and making racist comments. She began getting tattoos and showed them to neighbor Jeannie Steen. When Steen didn't react, San Marco walked around her in a circle and spat on the ground.

In July 2004, San Marco was denied a business license to begin publishing a periodical known as The Racist Press. San Marco also at one point said she wanted to register a cat food business and was rejected because she lived in an unincorporated area of Cibola County. While being interviewed there, she would often talk to herself. After the rejection, she would frequently come to the office and stare at an employee named Sonya Salazar and ask to see her. Salazar was often told to hide when San Marco came to the office. San Marco once made a rude accusation that Salazar had slept with someone; authorities were called. She also came into contact with authorities after she appeared naked at a gas station. She was clothed when the officers arrived and ultimately let her off with a warning. These run-ins with authorities were frequent and she was once admonished for driving half-naked. San Marco sold her condominium and told people she was going to visit a sister on the East Coast.

She held down a number of jobs, including a dispatcher for the Santa Barbara Police Department in the mid-1990s, a job for which she underwent a background check and psychological evaluation. She left the job after several months. San Marco worked at a high school serving lunch before quitting in 2000. She eventually bought a condominium and went to work for the postal service as a clerk. She left on psychological disability following a 2003 incident in which she was pulled out from under a mail-sorting machine and had to be wheeled from her workplace by police in handcuffs. She did return briefly, but was again removed from the building due to her erratic behavior and never returned. She was held at a Ventura mental hospital for three days in February 2001.

Jennifer San Marco was born in Brooklyn, New York to Frank San Marco (1932-1993) and Jeanette San Marco (nee San Pietro) (b. 1933). She went to Edward R. Murrow High School, later attending Brooklyn College. She then studied natural resources management at Rutgers University in New Jersey but did not graduate. In 1989 she came to California, where after studying she was hired as a guard at medium-security Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe. She quit two days before her probationary period ended. She never gave a reason for quitting but was described as a good worker.