SUTTER CREEK, Calif. _ On Sept. 3, a 58-year-old woman was walking her dog behind a strip mall in Sutter Creek when she noticed a scrap of paper that had been folded several times and left in a planter box near a Starbucks drive-thru.
She unfolded the paper to find the same message written five times with what appeared to be a black Sharpie pen: "I will try not to kill u."
The woman tossed the paper back down, leaving behind what may have been the last in a series of warnings about the horrific violence that was coming.
That night, at about 10:45, an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer named Brad Wheat went to the spot and began banging on the back door of the Get Ripped Nutrition store owned by Trae deBeaubien.
Inside, Wheat's estranged wife, Mary, and deBeaubien, her boyfriend of four months, immediately feared the worst. Within moments, Wheat pulled his car to the front parking lot, got out and blasted out the front window of the business with his CHP-issued .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semi-automatic handgun.
DeBeaubien called 911, but Wheat forced his way in past the broken glass and shot deBeaubien in the upper left chest before his handgun jammed. The two men struggled, with deBeaubien managing to knock Wheat to the ground and jar the gun out of his hands.
Mary Wheat, 43, grabbed the gun, knocked the remaining broken glass from the window frame and ran outside as deBeaubien lost his grip on Wheat because his hands were so slick from his own blood.
Wheat ran outside after her, where he executed her with two shots to the head and a third that hit her arm and pierced her chest after retrieving the gun. Then Wheat, an 11-year CHP veteran who had four children, killed himself with two shots to the neck and a third to the head.
But why did Wheat have a gun?
