Hours before he walked into his workplace at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center with two handguns to fatally shoot his bosses and then himself, Mario Ramirez went about his morning routine with his usual kindness and good cheer, his sister-in-law said.
He gave his children breakfast, took them to school (he had moved his family to Alhambra because its classrooms seemed safer than those in Boyle Heights) and returned home to get ready for his job as a technician at the hospital's pharmacy.
Then he went to work and shot his two immediate supervisors, Hugo Bustamante, 46, and Kelly Hales, 56. After Ramirez's noontime rampage, many of his colleagues speculated that he had turned to violence because he feared being laid off.
Long Beach Police Chief Anthony Batts noted that the shooting might be part of a "national trend" of workplace-related shootings by people distraught about economic losses.
But friends of Bustamante said that made no sense. Bustamante, Ramirez's boss and the pharmacy manager, had recently been telling friends that he was overjoyed he had found a way to rejigger the pharmacy's schedule to cut the budget without layoffs.
"He knew that they were talking about layoffs . . . he was really stressing out about it, but he figured out that they could open the pharmacy later and close it earlier and not cut jobs," said Bernadette Arizmendi, who coached the Cypress Cyclones youth soccer team with Bustamante. "He was so happy."
Officials with the Long Beach Police Department and the medical center said Friday that they could offer no further insight into what might have sparked Ramirez's shootings. Police said they may never know for sure.
That left the families and friends of Ramirez and his victims searching for answers as they mourned. Distraught, many described both Bustamante and Ramirez as loving, responsible fathers committed to their families and to their jobs at the medical center.
A friend of Ramirez's at the hospital, who did not want to be named because he feared for his own job, said he saw Ramirez coming into work the day before the shootings.
When asked how he was, Ramirez answered: "Great." His voice, the friend said, was full of "that good spirit that he had. He gave me a high-five. . . . It don't make no sense."
Eva Reyes, 52, Ramirez's sister-in-law, said Ramirez had seemed absolutely normal Thursday morning as he bid his wife goodbye and took care of his sons, ages 10 and 14.
