Killing suspect dies
Published 9:00 pm Monday, September 10, 2001
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – A former security guard wanted in the slayings of five people shot himself to death during a furious gunbattle with police early Monday, leaving a video suicide note boasting that he had “put on a hell of a show.”
“I giveth and I taketh away, that’s how it goes in (expletive) life,” Joseph Ferguson said on the tape, which authorities showed to reporters.
Ferguson, 20, committed suicide in a stolen car shortly after midnight after a frenzied, 40-minute chase through suburban Rancho Cordova. The shootout left a bystander critically injured and a California Highway Patrol officer wounded.
The suicide ended a weekend rampage that led authorities to evacuate Ferguson’s co-workers from their homes for their own safety.
Authorities say Ferguson, who had no criminal record, began killing people Saturday night because he was despondent over getting suspended from his supervisor’s job at Burns Security a week earlier. He was suspended after his ex-girlfriend, Burns guard Nina Susu, said he vandalized her car after the breakup.
She and another former co-worker were the first to die, shot as they worked at a city maintenance yard.
Ferguson holed up in the home of a Burns supervisor, and made the video there Sunday as he held the man and the man’s wife hostage. In the video, he said he would soon kill himself.
“I put on a hell of a show,” Ferguson said on the tape, wearing a black bulletproof vest, fingerless gloves and displaying a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. “I’ve taken four victims, this should be good enough to last about a week on the news. It’s time to feed the news media.”
Police say he killed the supervisor after 12 hours.
Police have also said Ferguson made cellular phone calls during the attacks, saying he wanted to commit a crime bloodier than that attributed to 27-year-old Ukrainian, Nikolay Soltys, the Sacramento resident suspected in another, recent mass slaying. Ferguson said “he was going to outdo Soltys, something along those lines,” said police spokesman Sgt. Daniel Hahn.
After disappearing all day Sunday, Ferguson was spotted by a highway patrolman at 11:30 p.m. Sunday. During the chase, Ferguson fired off more than 200 rounds at the pursuing officers before smashing his car into a light pole.
When police approached, they found he had shot himself, Sheriff’s Capt. John McGinness said.
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