Year after Yountville veterans treatment center murders, victims remembered

Victims of mass shooting a year ago at Yountville veterans treatment center remembered

PRESS DEMOCRAT
MARTIN ESPINOZATHE
March 10, 2019
YOUNTVILLE

“The unthinkable happened. Yountville was put on a new map,” he said. “We’re used to being put on the map for a lot of things. But we’re not used to, nor did we expect to be put on the national map for the location of a mass shooting.”

It’s been a year of shattered dreams and indescribable grief for Kathy Gonzales, whose daughter, Jennifer Gonzales Shushereba — and her unborn child — were among the victims in the deadly shooting at the Pathway Home for veterans in Yountville.

The lives of psychologist Gonzales Shushereba, 32, Pathway Home executive director Christine Loeber, 48, and staff therapist Jen Golick, 42, were remembered during a solemn memorial Saturday afternoon.

About 100 people, including the victims’ families and friends, Yountville residents and local community leaders, gathered for the memorial in the Community Center on Washington Street.

“I’m just so happy they haven’t forgotten them,” said Gonzales, tearfully. “I’m grateful the women can be remembered.”

Gonzales Shushereba, Loeber and Golick were killed in the March 9, 2018, tragedy by Albert Cheung Wong, 36, a troubled Army combat veteran who had been treated for nearly a year at the nonprofit veterans residential treatment center on the grounds of the Veterans Home of California. Cheung Wong then shot himself.

The shooting shattered the tranquility of the bucolic Napa Valley town, thrusting it onto a national stage as Yountville became the latest site of a mass shooting in America, Yountville town manager Steve Rogers said during the memorial.
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