Santa Gunman Christmas Eve Massacre Affected Many Other Lives
Santa Gunman Christmas Eve Massacre Affected Many Other Lives. Here is a story about one such person, whose life will never be the same, because of the Santa Gunman.
Like most people when you hear about something so horrific and it is on your best friends street. You are going to pick up that phone and call her to get the latest scoop. Never in a million years did Roxanne Jauregui think the shooting would be with her very dear friend, that she had known since she was 13…for over 30 years.
Roxanne didn’t know at that moment, that her best friend was among the victims and her life would never be the same.
Sylvia Pardo and eight of her immediate family members died late Christmas Eve at an annual Christmas Eve Party, when Silvia’s ex-husband, dressed in a complete Santa Claus suit with a huge gift…burst into the Christmas party on a shooting rampage killing 9 and injuring 3. He then torched the house with a home made fire launcher.
Authorities say that Bruce Pardo also planned to kill his own mother and his wife’s divorce lawyer before fleeing to Canada. The only thing that stopped him were the third-degree burns from the fire. His Santa Clause suit melted or caught fire and he knew his escape plans would no longer work. He broke into his brothers house and killed his self.
Roxanne still calls Sylvia’s cell phone every day. Even though she knows Silvia will never answer or get a call back. She says that hearing her friend’s voice, a cheerful message that’s full of the laughter that defined her personality and their friendship, is still habit and now part therapy.
Sometimes Roxanne leaves a message for Silvia. Sometimes, she just needs to talk to her.
“I have to live with her death and now I have to live with how it happened,” said Roxanne, who was close to her friend’s whole extended family. “It replays in my mind, that night, I just picture it. And I can’t run to her parents, I can’t run to her sister. There’s no one left.”
Roxanne and Silvia were tight. Roxanne accompanied her friend’s large family on annual camping trips to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park Spent weekends dancing with her at disco clubs and house parties in the San Gabriel Valley. Doing every thing together, that young girls growing up do. Now Roxanne only has memories, because the Santa Gunman took her friend and her friends family away. There will be no more running into them at the grocery store, in the neighborhood or at church. They are all gone forever.
The two best friends kept in touch into adulthood and remained inseparable. Sylvia would call Jauregui every day on her way home from her job in El Monte. The two friends saw each other regularly for girl stuff like shopping, drinks and dinners.
Then Silvia met a new man, a tall, handsome electrical engineer, Roxanne said her friend was instantly smitten. She was attracted by Bruce’s good looks, his education, loved that he was talkative and had a good sense of humor. Roxanne and her husband went on double dates with the new couple and found him both charming and sweet. Little did they know…little did they suspect…
The relationship progressed quickly, Roxanne said, and the two were married in January 2006. In photos, the two are grinning, cuddling by a swimming pool, Bruce looking fit and tan, or posing in formal attire at a fancy dinner. It was a fairy tale come true, or so they thought. That fairy tale was soon to become everyone’s worst unimaginable nightmare!
But then after the wedding, something changed. Roxanne said her friend would call her distraught and tell her that Bruce had become withdrawn and indifferent within months of their wedding vows. He refused to opening joint bank accounts and insisted that they keep their money separately. He was no longer affectionate or attentive. Silvia told Roxanne that he expected her to provide for her three children from previous relationships, without any help from him.
“She told me, ‘I don’t think he loves me anymore,’ and I said, ‘Just ride it out and we’ll see,’” Jauregui said. “But it didn’t get better, they just kept growing apart.” The marriage wasn’t working.
Roxanne says that the final straw came when Sylvia discovered tax papers that indicated her new husband had a son from a previous relationship. He hadn’t told her anything about. Silvia confronted Bruce and he denied it. Silvia called his mother, who told her Bruce had a son who was severely disabled after falling into a pool and almost drowning. His mother then told her how her grandchild became disabled. That it was Bruce’s fault.
The revelation devastated Sylvia. She had hoped to have a child with him, to have his first child. That was when Silvia told Bruce she wanted a divorce. He barely reacted, she told Roxanne. He calmly moved her belongings to the curb and told her to move out.
“How can you marry somebody and not know such a secret, that there was a child,” Roxanne said. “Silvia thought she was his first wife and would have his first child. She wanted his child.”
After Sylvia moved out, she talked less and less about her husband but the two women remained best friends and were closer than ever. Roxanne last saw her friend four days before she died. Which was only two days after her divorce was finalized. Little did she know it would be the very last time.
Roxanne, Silvia and another friend spent all day shopping in Chino Hills before going for drinks and dinner and then attending a company party at Sylvia brother’s house. All of Sylvia’s extended family was there, Roxanne recalled. They huddled around a fire pit together eating pozole, a type of traditional Mexican stew and reminiscing about old times as the party rolled on through the night, around them. Sylvia was looking forward to putting the divorce behind her and they made plans to spend New Year’s Eve together. It was a date she would never be able to keep.
“She really reveled in the fact that we’d been friends 30 years. She said, ‘Isn’t that special? Isn’t that great?’” Roxanne said.
The family invited Roxanne, her husband and their two children to their annual Christmas Eve Party, in Covina. At the last minute Roxanne and her husband decided to attend midnight Mass instead.
Roxanne now shudders when she thinks how things could have turned out differently. She keeps tracing the floor plan of her best friend’s childhood home in her mind, wondering where she was when she was gunned down, knowing she wouldn’t have been far from her best friends side.
“If he didn’t care about Silvia, her mother and father, he certainly didn’t care about me. We wouldn’t have made it out alive, we wouldn’t have had a chance,” Roxanne said, mascara streaking down her cheeks from her tears of grief.
“It just goes through your mind: What was she thinking at that moment when she looked in his eyes?”
What a way to remember your best friend. That last split second before she dies a horrible death. This is what the Santa Gunman did to many people. To children who lost their parents, to friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, the postman, the UPS man…the list is on going…
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Santa Gunman Christmas Eve Massacre Affected Many Other Lives
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This man is not a person he is an animal and that is a fact.
How could a human go up to a baby and shoot the child in the face he is way beyond evil way beyond.
There had to be all kinds of red flags going up the pole there had to be but nobody saw them. He already almost killed his first child by putting the child in the pool and when his first wife where the baby was he said in the pool.
I think what would have helped is don’t have the party were he could find it because he was waiting for the opportunity to kill off the entire family.
MAY GOD BLESS THE ENTIRE FAMILY THAT REMAINS NOW AND FOREVER AS I AM SURE HE WILL!!!