California Veterans’ home hostage crisis: Gunman was army veteran with PTSD

Details emerged on Saturday about a decorated former U.S. serviceman who took three women hostage at a California veterans’ home where he had undergone treatment for PTSD, in a standoff that ended when police found him and his captives dead.

The Veterans Home of California in Yountville, the largest such facility in the United States, was the scene on Friday of the latest mass shooting to rock a country still shocked by the slaughter last month of 17 people at a Florida high school.

Officials named the gunman as Albert Wong, 36, of Sacramento, and said he had served with the U.S. Army on active duty from May 2010 to August 2013 and spent a year in Afghanistan. He received four medals including an Afghanistan campaign medal and was awarded an Expert Marksmanship Badge with Rifle, the Pentagon said.

Wong had been a patient of Pathway Home, a programme at the Yountville complex for former service members suffering post-traumatic stress disorder after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The San Francisco Chronicle, citing unnamed sources, said he had been asked to leave the program two weeks ago.

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