WATCH Monday news conference below.
An auto mechanic who carried out a shooting rampage at his University City apartment complex that left a woman dead and six others wounded was distraught over a breakup and targeted his victims randomly, police said today.
Peter Raymond Selis, 49, fired a large-caliber handgun into a crowd of birthday party revelers in a pool area at the apartment complex in the 9000 block of Judicial Drive just after 6 p.m. Sunday before being killed by officers, according to San Diego police.
A half-dozen of the victims were black and one was Latino, but authorities do not believe the rampage was an ethnicity-based hate crime, San Diego police Chief Shelley Zimmerman said. ``There is zero information to indicate that race played a factor in this terrible and horrific crime,'' Zimmerman told news crews during a late-morning briefing. ``The victims were targeted for no other reason but their mere presence in the vicinity of the (shooting).''
Four women and three men suffered bullet wounds during the assault. One of the female victims died later in the evening at a hospital. Her name was withheld pending family notification. A fourth man suffered a broken arm fleeing the gunfire.
Two of the victims remained in critical but stable condition at hospitals this morning, according to police. It was unclear if the assailant knew any of the victims. Investigators have determined that Selis' girlfriend had broken up with him several days before, leaving him ``distraught'' and depressed, the police chief said.
He was sitting in a lounge chair drinking a beer and speaking to his former girlfriend on his cellphone during the shooting spree, Zimmerman said. ``It is apparent that Selis wanted his ex-girlfriend to listen in as he carried out his rampage,'' the chief told reporters.
When officers arrived, Selis fired in the direction of one of them, prompting three of the personnel to return fire, according to the SDPD. He died at the scene.
Selis, who worked at a Ford dealership, was also deeply in debt and had filed for bankruptcy in 2015, according to news reports.
Photo Credit: Phil Farrar