y evening, there was more frightening drama: At least two of the suspects were believed to have lived in a townhouse in the nearby city of Redlands, and just before 6 p.m., SWAT teams began breaking their way into the home after hours of monitoring it. The teams began swarming the normally quiet area around 4:30 p.m.; by nightfall, two large armored trucks sat just outside the townhouse. Several officers wearing fatigues stood together.
The residential neighborhood, dotted with small, low apartment buildings, was suddenly crowded with television cameras and police officers. Neighbors — curious, if wary — stood around watching for what might come next. After nightfall, officers used a crane to knock out a front window. Fifteen minutes later, a robot entered, apparently to sweep the home. A loud bang, apparently a controlled explosion, rang out around 6:30 p.m.
It was the culmination of a day of fear and confusion. Throughout the day, this sprawling community of strip malls and shopping centers, a refuge for Latino, Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants in the mountains an hour east of Los Angeles, was transformed into a rolling crime scene; a sea of screaming sirens, roadblocks at every turn, bomb threats and police officers wearing flak jackets marching down the street or breaking down doors.
County parking lots were abnormally empty, as people stayed home watching the drama on television, or out their front windows. Highways and streets were jammed with traffic as police blocked off whole neighborhoods.
“I heard sirens approaching, and 10 police cars came up, stopped, pulled up their weapons and started screaming at a man to get on the floor,” said Berzaj Ghesh, 18, who works at a pizza shop, describing what he stumbled across when he got home in the afternoon. “That’s when I ran inside.”
At the corner of Orange Show Road and Waterman Avenue, less than a half-mile from the site that the attackers had targeted, squads of police officers, many in flak jackets, gathered and kept onlookers away. Helicopters buzzed overhead; a convoy of school buses were lined up and filled with the evacuees.
Emergency room doctors at the Loma Linda University Medical Center girded for a procession of people who were wounded in the attack, which left at least 14 dead and 17 injured. The emergency room staff members scurried to attention as one ambulance arrived, holding up a big sheet to shield a patient who was being unloaded from a crush of camera crews and onlookers. At one point, the hospital itself had a “code yellow” bomb threat, sending another wave of panic; it turned out to be unfounded.
At the very moments when the violence seemed to have receded, it emerged again with a loud reminder that the suspects were still at large.
At the Rock Church and World Outreach Center, where many of the survivors were taken, family members who had gathered at the driveway — drawn by texts or telephone calls from relatives anxious to get home — watched in sudden astonishment as a procession of police cars and vans, lights blazing and sirens blaring, barreled out the driveway, heading toward the scene where a suspect had been cornered. A similar scene occurred at the medical center where a dozen heavily armed police officers stormed out of the emergency room shortly after 3 p.m. and drove off with lights flashing and sirens blaring.
At the scene of the shootout, dozens of police cars blocked off the road where the suspect lay dead near a church, and people gathered in the road, watching as SWAT teams continued searching nearby cars and homes, worried that a suspect was roaming their neighborhoods.
“One of them went right through the alley here,” said Martha Golzales, who lives in the neighborhood. “Then shots were fired within a minute or two.”
Robert Apolinar, 46, said he saw police officers question several men, one in full camouflage and army boots. They put them into the police cruisers, outside a small mobile home. But several minutes later, the police let them go. Less than a minute later, shots were fired near the church. “That’s running distance from here,” Mr. Apolinar said.
Outside the church where the survivors were taken to safety, and for questioning, Gabriel Torres paced, smoking cigarette after cigarette and texting on his cellphone as he waited for his wife, Carina, a health care worker, who was at the other end of the driveway
“She was just doing her job,” said Mr. Torres, as he waited for his wife to be released. “She heard something was going on and climbed under her desk. She heard footsteps.”
As dusk began to fall, Mr. Alcazar continued to wait for his daughter as he described the terrifying flurry of texts he had exchanged with her earlier in the day. “She saw a lot of people running around with guns,” he said. “She sent me a text and said they were shooting. They were very scared. I tried to communicate with her by phone. She said, ‘You cannot come in because it’s full of police.’ ”
