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First Steps Taken to Repair HEW
SATURDAY January 13, 2001

First Steps Taken to Repair HEW
By Doug Mattson
HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE BUILDING - Behavioral Health Wing ---> Path gunman took into bldg.---1) Pearlie Mae Feldman ---2)Laura Wilcox ---3) Judith Edzards ---4) Bullet Holes ---5) Daisy Switzer jumps from window
There were few indications havoc and terror reigned here two days earlier. No longer were bullet slugs in the wall, shards of glass on the floor or blood stains on the carpet.
On Friday, just contractors, county workers and jail inmates were at the HEW Building's Behavioral Health Department to restore structural normalcy - if not the emotional kind - with some security-minded changes.
"Everything, it's been cut out. It's gone," said Randy Rasmussen of Gray Electric Co., in Grass Valley.
He was removing panic alarms on a wall that would later be torn down. He said the alarms would be installed later, after the wing was reconfigured - for security purposes - to keep visitors from seeing the length of the wing's hallway.
"And I suppose they're going to put bulletproof glass in," Rasmussen said.
It remains unclear when the department's 55 employees will be able to return - or how many will want to.
"There are employees frightened about coming back, and that's a normal reaction," said Dennis Cassella, county director of emergency services.
On Wednesday, according to the Sheriff's Department, mental health patient Scott Thorpe is alleged to have walked in and fired 10 shots from a 9 mm Ruger semiautomatic pistol, striking three people, killing two.
It's Cassella's belief that Thorpe entered the lobby from outside and first shot dead Pearlie Mae Feldman.
Cassella said the alleged gunman probably next fired through a glass partition into the reception area, killing Laura Wilcox.
Thorpe next allegedly fired through a narrow rectangular window set in a locked door leading to a hallway lined with offices. Some of the shots struck Judith Edzards, and at least two slugs lodged in a wall at the end of the hall 50 feet away, Cassella said.
Cassella wasn't sure if the gunman made it past the door and down the hallway, where a worker, Daisy Switzer, jumped out a second-story window to flee the gunfire.
But Switzer's mother, Grass Valley lawyer Jayne Kelly de Lopez, said her daughter was convinced the gunman made it down the hallway.
"He was coming methodically down the hallway. She was next, and he was at the door, and there was no other way out," de Lopez said.
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