Man dressed as Santa kills at least 9 people

THE bloodbath began when an 8-year-old girl attending a Christmas Eve party answered a knock at the door.

A man dressed as Santa and carrying what appeared to a present pulled out a handgun and shot her in the face, then began shooting indiscriminately as partygoers tried to flee.

By the time it was over, at least nine people at the party were dead and the house was torched. The gunman killed himself hours after exacting revenge against his ex-wife by going on a massacre at his former in-laws’ home.

Bruce Pardo’s ex-wife and her parents were believed to be among the dead. At daybreak yesterday, investigators resumed searching what was left of their two-story home on a cul-de-sac in a quiet Covina neighbourhood 40 kilometres east of Los Angeles.

Pardo, 45, had no criminal record and no history of violence, according to police, but he was angry following last week’s settlement of his divorce after a marriage that lasted barely a year.

Police said he went to his former in-laws’ home about 11.30pm on Wednesday for their annual Christmas party.

The gift-wrapped box Pardo was carrying actually contained a pressurised homemade device he used to spray a liquid that quickly sent the house up in flames.

David Salgado, a neighbour, said he saw the 8-year-old victim being escorted to an ambulance by four SWAT team members as flames up to 40 feet high consumed the house.

A 16-year-old girl was shot in the back, and a 20-year-old woman broke her ankle when she escaped by jumping from a second-story window.

Those two, and the 8-year-old, remained hospitalised. All were expected to recover.

When the fire was extinguished on Thursday, officers found three charred bodies in the living room.

“They were met with a scene that was just indescribable,” police chief Kim Raney said. Investigators found five more bodies amid the ashes later that day and another body yesterday.

Following the shootings, Pardo drove to his brother’s home in the Sylmar area.

Police were called to the home early Thursday, and officers found Pardo dead of a single bullet to the head.