LOS ANGELES _ She was 500 miles away when a wild-eyed gunman killed her boyfriend, his mother and three other people in a dusty mountain hamlet in Northern California.
Now, just two weeks after Kevin Janson Neal's bloody rampage ended in a hail of police gunfire, Hailey Poland said she can't help feeling that she should have been with the victims of Rancho Tehama.
"I just wish I could've been there for them," Poland said from her parents' home in Lancaster. "Kevin's dead, he got the easy way out. The world is rid of one less psychopath with a gun targeting innocent people."
Poland knew the killer all too well. She once lived next door to Neal and carries a short scar on her torso where he stabbed her with a kitchen knife during a confrontation in January.
Poland said she's still jittery from the sound of gunfire that echoed frequently from the killer's property next door, as well as the sound of violent confrontations between him and his wife.
"We all knew this was going to end bad," said Poland, 34. "We just didn't know how exactly and when."
