Investigators still are hoping to learn what prompted a 22-year-old Alaska man to open fire on five people the morning of Oct. 11.
Investigators have obtained Stefan Alexander Martin-Urban’s computers and are going through his files looking for cyber clues to explain why he chose to open fire in Grand Junction.
Martin-Urban, who had moved to Lakewood about eight weeks before, had followed a trail from Alaska to Los Angeles to St. George, Utah, and then Lakewood before doubling back for that final, unexplained drive to Grand Junction.
When Mike and Flo Gallagher pulled out of their house about 8 that morning,
they noticed a dark green Honda CR-V that rolled by the house, turned around and headed out, just in front of the Gallaghers.
When the Honda slowed, Mike Gallagher steered his car to the left, thinking only that the other driver seemed distracted.
Neither thought of the Honda until they pulled into the Fines’ driveway several minutes later, where Terry and Linda Fine were waiting inside.
Flo Gallagher and Linda Fine were outside the car and their husbands set to arranging the luggage in the trunk when the Honda again rolled by.
“
I think that’s the guy who was in our cul-de-sac,” Gallagher remembered telling his wife.
“Yeah, that’s weird,” she said.
The Honda driver parked, got out and strode toward the Fines and Gallaghers, approaching Terry Fine first.
It seemed to Gallagher that Fine said something and the man raised his right hand, which was hidden behind his back to show a semiautomatic pistol, later determined to be a Ruger 9 mm.
The
gunman said nothing to anyone, Gallagher remembered. He shot Fine, then moved toward the back seat of the BMW, where Linda Fine was seated, screaming.
He shot several times at Linda Fine and then shot Flo Gallagher, who had jumped out of the car. The shot wounded her mortally.
Gallagher believed Flo was still in the car and knew that Linda Fine was in the back seat, bleeding from several bullet wounds.
The gunman leveled the barrel at Gallagher and ... nothing.
The slide was back, meaning he was out of ammunition.
Gallagher knew that meant he had but a moment to move out.
The gunman, moving swiftly, popped his empty clip out and loaded a fresh one.
Gallagher had started the car, but couldn’t throw it into reverse until he tapped the brake pedal.
As he spun back and away from the gunman, the pistol cracked and a bullet slammed into the hood in front of him. A second shot hit just left of it. Then a third hit the forward window post and the fourth slammed into the middle window post.
In between the second and third shots, Gallagher remembered seeing Flo sprawled on the ground.
“
That was the hardest thing of all of this because I’m leaving my wife laying on the ground,” he said later. “But you know the other side of that is God told me to just keep your foot on the accelerator and just go, because
I knew Linda was dying.”
Gallagher sped out of the neighborhood, stopping for a moment to scream a warning to a jogger not to head down the street.
The gunman returned to his vehicle and headed out the same way when neighbor Paco Larson stepped in front of him.
The gunman fired twice through his windshield. One shot struck Larson, who survived, though doctors left the bullet in his back.
Moments after Gallagher left, Hahn flagged down a deputy Mesa County sheriff who happened by on his way to work. As Hahn spoke with the deputy, the dark green Honda drove by.
It seemed to Hahn the driver had something on his mind.
“We made eye contact,” Hahn said. “I’m thinking he wanted to say something, but then he saw the sheriff.”
The man he saw in the Honda, without a doubt, was Martin-Urban, he said.
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Originally Posted by miss_lickycharms
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