Custody dispute seen as motive in shooting at California beauty salon

A custody dispute may have been at the center of a mass shooting that left eight people dead at a Seal Beach, Calif., hair salon.

Police on Wednesday night had not released the alleged gunman's name or the identities of the victims, nor had they established a motive.

But friends and witnesses who knew the salon employees said the alleged gunman was Scott Dekraai and he appeared to be targeting his former wife, who was a stylist at Salon Meritage. They said the couple had been involved in a bitter custody dispute involving their son.

Full coverage: Deadly shooting at Seal Beach hair salon

Dekraai, 41, allegedly stormed into the salon about 1:30 p.m. and appeared to be looking for his former wife, Michelle Fournier, according to friends and witnesses. Dekraai is a resident of Huntington Beach. It was unclear whether Fournier was among those killed.

According to Los Angeles County Superior Court documents, Dekraai initiated a divorce case in 2007 against Fournier, whose last name was then Dekraai, court spokeswoman Mary Hearn said. A judge ruled that all contact between the couple had to be via text or email, except for a 10-minute phone call once a week to discuss their child's education and well-being.

At the time of the court dispute, Hearn said, it appeared that Dekraai was awarded custody and Fournier had to comply with several conditions to see the child, such as to not consume alcohol 24 hours before visiting. In August 2010, the case was transferred to Orange County Superior Court at Dekraai's request, according to Hearn.

Fournier always seemed to be in a great mood and enjoyed her children, said Judy Rodriguez Watson, co-owner of the Bay City Center where the salon is located. "She was a sweet, sweet, loving happy mama," Watson said. "She was always showing off photos of her kids."

She said she believes Fournier has three sons.

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Photo: A city police officer speaks to people at the scene of Wednesday’s deadly shooting. Witnesses said the gunman was the ex-husband of a stylist at the Salon Meritage. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times / October 13, 2011)

Man shot dead by deputies in Downey

Detectives were investigating Thursday the fatal shooting of a man in Downey by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies.

The shooting took place about 6:50 p.m. Wednesday at Firestone Boulevard and Old River School Road.

Officials were not releasing details about the shooting but said no officers were injured.

The man who was shot was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Coroner's officials had no information on him.

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Seal Beach shooting: Custody dispute seen as motive

A custody dispute may have been at the center of a mass shooting that left eight people dead at a Seal Beach hair salon.

Police on Wednesday night had not released the alleged gunman's name or the identities of the victims, nor had they established a motive.

But friends and witnesses who knew the salon employees said the alleged gunman was Scott Dekraai and he appeared to be targeting his former wife, who was a stylist at Salon Meritage. They said the couple had been involved in a bitter custody dispute involving their son.

Full coverage: Deadly shooting at Seal Beach hair salon

Dekraai, 41, allegedly stormed into the salon about 1:30 p.m. and appeared to be looking for his former wife, Michelle Fournier, according to friends and witnesses. Dekraai is a resident of Huntington Beach. It was unclear whether Fournier was among those killed.

According to Los Angeles County Superior Court documents, Dekraai initiated a divorce case in 2007 against Fournier, whose last name was then Dekraai, court spokeswoman Mary Hearn said. A judge ruled that all contact between the couple had to be via text or email, except for a 10-minute phone call once a week to discuss their child's education and well-being.

At the time of the court dispute, Hearn said, it appeared that Dekraai was awarded custody and Fournier had to comply with several conditions to see the child, such as to not consume alcohol 24 hours before visiting. In August 2010, the case was transferred to Orange County Superior Court at Dekraai's request, according to Hearn.

Fournier always seemed to be in a great mood and enjoyed her children, said Judy Rodriguez Watson, co-owner of the Bay City Center where the salon is located. "She was a sweet, sweet, loving happy mama," Watson said. "She was always showing off photos of her kids."

She said she believes Fournier has three sons.

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Photos: Seal Beach shooting

Witness says of gunman: ‘Anybody he saw he was shooting’

Seal Beach mass shooting appears to be Orange County's worst

--Nicole Santa Cruz, Tony Barboza, Robert J. Lopez and Tony Barboza

Photo: A city police officer speaks to people at the scene of Wednesday’s deadly shooting. Witnesses said the gunman was the ex-husband of a stylist at the Salon Meritage. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times / October 13, 2011)

Target commits to 100% sustainable, traceable fish by 2015

The second largest discount retailer in the U.S. announced Thursday that it will sell only sustainable, traceable fish by 2015. Minneapolis-based Target Corp. operates 1,762 stores, many of which are converting to incorporate PFresh markets that sell fresh and frozen foods, including fish.

In 2010, Target stopped selling farmed salmon, Chilean sea bass and orange roughy due to various sustainability issues. It currently sells 50 different brands of fish certified by either the Marine Stewardship Council or the Global Aquaculture Alliance. 

"We thought this larger commitment to fully eliminate anything that's not certified by 2015 would be the right thing to do to encourage our guests to make the right decisions," said Shawn Gensch, vice president of marketing for Target's sustainability initiatives.

Target is partnering with the nonprofit marine conservation group FishWise to reach its sustainability goals. According to FishWise executive director Tobias Aguirre, the group will assess all Target seafood products with vendor surveys to understand how the seafood is caught or farmed and will evaluate the environmental impacts associated with each product.

Aguirre said the fish species with the largest such impacts include big eye tuna caught with 50-mile fishing lines that snag high levels of unintended catch, including sharks, turtles and sea birds, and farm-raised shrimp that may have contact with natural bodies of water and spread disease.

Tracing Target's fish from the water to the store is likely to be more difficult because "there is no national traceability policy and the seafood supply chains are incredibly complex," Aguirre said. Supplier audits and a tracking system are among the tools FishWise plans to implement in partnership with Target.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not currently have a seafood tracking database. Just 2% of the seafood eaten in the United States is inspected, according to a seafood fraud report issued earlier this year by the Washington, D.C.-based international ocean advocacy group, Oceana.

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Photo: A steak is cut from the tail of an Atlantic blue fin tuna. Credit: Sachi Cunningham / Los Angeles Times

Why alcohol is not as strong as we imagine – or is it?

Alcohol: strong stuff (Photo: Karan Kapoor )

The effects of alcohol are not nearly as powerful as we imagine. In fact, cultural norms and the behaviour of people around us have more to do with how we behave when drunk than any properties of booze itself. Booze makes us slur our speech, bump into tables and so on, but it doesn't determine how we behave and what happens to our personalities. It doesn't make us smash windows, punch people, grope women and generally behave like yobs: we do that, in Britain anyway, because that's how we've learnt to behave when drunk. We've seen other people do it, and it's part of our culture.

This is what Kate Fox argues in an excellent article on the BBC website. She believes that everything we're told about alcohol, far from improving people's behaviour, actually acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The "messages" we take on board encourage us to believe that booze has almost magical powers to change our behaviour, when it doesn't. So drinkers behave as they expect to – which is often anti-socially and violently. Miss Fox wants to see alcohol education that transmits these messages instead:

a) alcohol does not cause disinhibition (aggressive, sexual or otherwise) and… b) even when you are drunk, you are in control of and have total responsibility for your actions and behaviour.

"Alcohol education will have achieved its ultimate goal," Fox writes, "not when young people in this country are afraid of alcohol and avoid it because it is toxic and dangerous, but when they are frankly just a little bit bored by it."

She makes her point very well and the whole article is worth reading. I have two doubts though. First, I slightly wonder whether she invests government propaganda and public education with more influence than it actually has. It's true that people in Britain behave badly because they've learnt to. But don't they also behave like that because they want to, as well? In other words, they like behaving like yobs.

The second thing has to do with Kate Fox's organisation, the Social Issues Research Centre. According to an article in the British Medical Journal last month, this august-sounding body shares its Oxford offices with a market research company called MCM. MCM's clients apparently include Bass Taverns, the Brewers and Licensed Retail Association, the Cider Industry Council, Grand Metropolitan Retail, the Portman Group (jointly funded by Bass, Courage, Guinness etc), Pubmaster, Rank Leisure, and Whitbread Inns, as well as some Australian brewing operations and several other businesses.

Kate Fox herself, who is the director of both MCM and the SIRC, has said that she doesn't think this amounts to a conflict of interest. She is, after all, a social anthropologist and, like all researchers, she has to get her funding from somewhere. The trouble is that her conclusions are quite booze-friendly. She's essentially saying alcohol isn't the cause of anti-social behaviour and violence we think it is. Since this happens to be the message the drinks industry would like us to grasp too, her organisation's links with alcohol producers raise a doubt in the mind.

Two Amtrak trains collide in Oakland, injuring passengers

Two Amtrak trains collided Wednesday night in Oakland, injuring a number of passengers in the accident near Jack London Square, authorities said.

The trains were traveling at a low speed when they struck shortly before 10 p.m. near Webster Street and Embarcadero, the Oakland Police Department said.

"Apparently they put two trains on the same track," Sgt. Randy Pope told The Times.

Reports from Bay Area news organizations said at least 18 people were hurt. Pope said police could not confirm those numbers but said that the victims appeared to have non-life-threatening injuries.

No other details were immediately available.

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Makeshift memorial set up at Seal Beach shooting scene

After darkness descended Wednesday, a group of neighbors and bystanders assembled a spontaneous memorial of flowers, candles and cards outside the Seal Beach beauty salon where eight people were slain and another critically wounded in a shooting rampage.

Some prayed aloud near the police tape that marked the crime scene. Their prayers went out to all their neighbors and friends since the victims have not yet been publicly identified.

Full coverage: Deadly shooting at Seal Beach hair salon

Pam Rayburn, 53, placed sunflowers under the small tree draped with police tape.

She also left a handwritten card that read: "To the family of my neighbor: I don't know you, but I want you to know you are not alone."

Rayburn said she lives just across the San Gabriel River in Long Beach, but walks past the salon every day, goes to a nearby salon and considers Seal Beach her home. Her husband practices law from an office a few blocks away on the town's Main Street.

Rayburn, who works at Cal State Long Beach, lost her 23-year-old daughter to suicide four years ago and said news of the deaths Wednesday stirred up memories of that day.

She pictured the families of the victims being called by police with painful news.

"No family should ever get that call," she said.

 "It just doesn't make sense. It's such a small town; nothing ever happens," Rayburn said, wiping away tears. "Another tragedy, another senseless loss."

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Photo: People comfort each other Wednesday afternoon near the shooting scene. Credit: Gina Ferazzi /Los Angeles Times