IHOP Shooting: Killer Described as 'Gentle, Kind' Before Rampage
He drove up to IHOP with a “Support Our Troops” bumper sticker on his minivan. After parking, he took out his loaded AK-47 and shot a motorcyclist, then walked into the restaurant and gunned down in cold blood three National Guardsmen and one civilian before killing himself. His name was Eduardo Sencion.
Sencion was born in Mexico but was an American citizen whose family had lived in Carson City for at least a decade. He worked at his family’s restaurant in South Lake Tahoe, about an hour’s drive from Carson City and was “kind of slow,” according to a family friend interviewed by the Nevada Appeal.
Sencion appears to have had mental difficulties and was committed to a mental hospital in 2000 after an altercation with police. He was not charged with a crime during the incident, says South Lake Tahoe Police Chief Brian Uhler. Sencion had no other contact with police since then. In fact, Sencion had no criminal record at all – not even a traffic ticket, according to state records.
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Aside from mental difficulties, Sencion also had financial problems.
He owed over $42,000 for a car and had several credit card and medical bills he could not afford to pay. He filed for bankruptcy in January of 2009 and at the time of the murder, Sencion had barely $200 in three bank accounts.
Sencion’s bankruptcy lawyer, Joe Laub, was surprised to hear his former client committed such a gruesome murder, calling it an “aberration of character.”
“He’s a gentle, kind man who was very helpful to friends and family,” Laub told The Associated Press.
"Lots of people are quiet, lots of people are slow or have some mental problems, even severe mental problems and pressures, but they don't do terrible things," Dr. David Reiss, a psychiatrist and owner of the psychiatric consulting firm DMRDynamics, told the Reno Gazette. "Why now? Why IHOP? Why Guardsmen?”
"In some cases, people who have done horribly violent things can't even explain it themselves. Even they sometimes can't recover what was going on in their minds,” Reiss said.
Gilberto Sencion, Eduardo’s elder brother, had driven from Sacramento after learning about the rampage.
"I feel very sorry about what happened," he said. "I feel very sorry about those people. I'm trying to find out what happened."
