'Crazy as a loon'
Inspectors descend on shooter's home

Postal Inspectors secure the area around former postal employee Jennifer Sanmarco's home just outside of Milan Wednesday afternoon. Sanmarco killed six people Monday in Goleta, Calif., before killing herself. She is also suspected of killing a neighbor in California. [Photo by Matt Hinshaw/Independent]

By Jim Maniaci
Cibola County Bureau

Postal Inspector Amanda McMurrey from the Fort Worth, Texas bureau answers questions and hands out business cards outside the home of former postal employee Jennifer Sanmarco located just outside of Milan. Sanmarco on Monday gunned down 6 postal employees before killing herself in Goleta Calif. [Photo by Matt Hinshaw/Independent]

MILAN — Blue-jacketed U.S. Postal Service inspectors and a neighbor's two alert but contented dogs continued Wednesday to guard the front gate of a wind-swept hillside home north of Milan, waiting word from California whether a federal search warrant will be executed in the Jennifer Sanmarco case.

The warrant was served this morning. Residents volunteered to leave the neighborhood as several local, state and federal authorities entered the propery along with a bomb-sniffing dog from Kirtland Air Force Base. Roads leading to the home were blocked and media was not allowed to approach as the search was conducted.

The search of the property was still under way at press time and no information on the results was released.

Meanwhile, talk in the surrounding communities centered on the Sanmarco, who one Grants businessman simply described her as being "as crazy as a loon."

A Milan businessman said he sometimes had to pick her up and bring her inside from the cold because she would kneel down and pray, as if in a trance, for hours.

Sanmarco killed herself Monday night in the sprawling USPS mail sorting center in Goleta, Calif., an ocean-front suburb of Santa Barbara, after gunning down at least five others in the facility's parking lot or inside. An estimated 80 people evacuated the center after the shooting started about 10 p.m. She used a 9 mm handgun, and reloaded it at least once, according to The Associated Press dispatch.

USPS press officer Amanda McMurrey arrived in Milan in a convoy with almost a half-dozen other inspectors in shiny government vehicles. She arrived from division headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, shortly after 2 p.m. to tell a half-dozen reporters, including one from Los Angeles, that the determination had not been made whether a search warrant would be sought for the postal inspectors to scour Sanmarco's spacious lot on the north face of Black Mesa and its three buildings.

Although there is a federal magistrate available in Gallup, the warrant most likely would come from a federal judge in Albuquerque, McMurrey said.

"We're trying to figure out why it happened," McMurrey said of the focus of the massive investigation, which the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office confirmed this morning that Sanmarco's gun was used in the shooting death of a neighbor with whom McMurrey said Sanmarco had "contentious relations."

Local police agencies were stretched thin keeping the fenced property, which is cut by gullies and covered by scattered black lava rock and bushes, closed as a potential crime scene until the first USPS inspector arrived. The USPS sent an inspector from Albuquerque to take over guard duties Tuesday morning. Other inspectors came from El Paso, Texas.

McMurrey said authorities believe the largest structure on the lot is Sanmarco's primary residence. To the north side is a one-window, one-door log cabin.

From the lot in the 1700 block of Enchanted Mesa Trail is a narrow, but well-maintained gravel road which snakes its way up the hillside's west side.

McMurrey said Sanmarco began working at the Goleta center in 1997 and was given a disability retirement in 2003. She moved to Cibola County in 2004 and began issuing a letter-sized publication, The Racist Press. Only about a half-dozen issues are known to have been published.

Milan denied her an occupation operating license on the grounds her business was outside the village limits. Cibola County officials could not find a license for her and the city of Grants did not issue her one, either.

Sanmarco was considered an eccentric pest, but had only a few run-ins with village or city police and no actual arrests. She did receive one traffic citation in Grants last year, Chief Marty Vigil said. In another Grants incident, she drove into a convenience store without her clothes on to refuel a vehicle on June 18. The clerks told her to get dressed. Once city officers arrived, they could not arrest her since she was clothed.

Her main problems showed up at the Milan Village Hall because of increasingly bizarre behavior. Police Chief Jerry Stephens, after one last incident, went looking for her, but couldn't contact her. He said no further incidents occurred.

Deputy Clerk Terri Gallegos noted that at one point, the woman harassed an employee so much the worker got up and left, with the other employees taking care of her. Later, in another incident, after what she considered a rude allegation, Gallegos called the chief.

Any time someone would ask her a question, Sanmarco would respond, Gallegos said. But otherwise, "any time someone was not talking to her directly, she was off in her own little world."

Authorities said Sanmarco had both Milan and Grants mailing addresses.

— To contact reporter Jim Maniaci in Grants, telephone 285-6184 or (505) 870-7775 (cellular).