Daily Archives: December 25, 2008

There is a rather Ironical twist to this story. I lived in Covina for many years. I actually knew this guy. Mr. Pardo and his wife were clients of mine when I owned a small business. This was about 8 years Ago and they rented a home in Covina, CA.

I did a quick search on “Bruce Pardo and I got a result that shows him currently living in Montrose CA. The article I am going to post here lists him as committing suicide in the Sylmar Area of California. Montrose is sort of a suburb of Sylmar.

I remember Mr. Pardo as being kind of nutty, and I am not just saying this because of the current tragedy. On several occasions I had to leave a door note explaining that I could not get in the back yard to service his swimming pool. The reason was because there was enough dog poop on the ground to make a clay model of a Buick Roadmaster.

So Mr. Pardo called and was rather irate and asked if I could come by on a Saturday as he would have it cleaned up. I did just that, but upon arrival the dog feculance was still there. I knocked on the door and Bruce Pardo came out and said ” Oh what’s the big deal? Mr. Pardo proceeded to kick the mushy piles of dooty out of the way with his bare foot.

Mr. Pardo had crap all over his foot. I went out to the pool thinking “how is he going to get all the dooty off of his foot? I will tell you how. As I am setting up to clean his filthy pool, Mr. Pardo walks over to the steps in the shallow end, puts his foot in the water, shakes it vigorously and proceeds to rub the poop off with his bare hands. I mean Mr. Pardo did this as if he did it all the time. Without hesitation.

I waited for him to go back in the house and I packed my stuff and left never to return again. He called and made some threats of legal action. I told my wife that he was a nutbag and I would not be returning there anytime soon. True story.. . JD

Below is a copy of the Los Angeles Times article.

A distraught man dressed as Santa Claus opened fire at a Christmas Eve party and then set the house ablaze, killing at least three people, police officials said. The shooter killed himself hours later.

Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, 45, knocked on the front door of a home on the 1100 block of Knollcrest Drive in Covina around 11:30 Wednesday night, said Covina Police Lt. Pat Buchanan. Thought to be someone hired to entertain children at the party, Pardo was let in the house and immediately opened fire with a handgun, Buchanan said.

Partygoers fled the house in panic, running to neighbors and frantically calling police.

Shortly after, the two-story house located at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac was fully engulfed in flames, fire officials said. It took about an hour and a half to extinguish the fire.

Buchanan said police and fire officials are uncertain how the fire started, but are looking into the possibility that Pardo threw some sort of incendiary device.

An 8-year old girl with a gunshot wound to the face and a 16-year-old girl shot in the back were transported to local hospitals, officials said. A third person broke an ankle in the rush to flee.

After the fire was out, police peering into what had been the front room saw three bodies, Buchanan said. The Associated Press quoted an official from the coroner’s office as saying that the remains of “several” more bodies had been found in the wreckage. Buchanan could not confirm those reports, saying only that some people thought to have attended the party remained unaccounted for and that “there is a good possibility that there are other people inside.”

Pardo, whose wife divorced him last September according to court records, “was apparently going through a bad time in his marriage,” Buchanan said. The party was at the house of a relative of Pardo’s ex-wife, he added, although it is unclear whether she was at the party at the time.

Shortly before 3:30 a.m., Pardo’s brother summoned Los Angeles police to his Sylmar home — about 25 miles away from the carnage. Officers arrived to find Pardo dead from a single gunshot to the head, police officials said.