Restaurant shooting sprees leave three dead

Nation's Restaurant News, May 8, 2000

SANDY, UTAH, AND MCKEES ROCKS, PA. -- Two unrelated shooting sprees on April 27 and April 28 took the lives of three employees at restaurants in those respective cities.

The manager of a franchised Chevys unit in Utah was shot and killed April 27 by a man who went on a shooting rampage, killing two people and wounding three. Suspect Quinn Martinez, 21, was captured the following morning. The gunman wounded a female companion in a hotel room before running to Chevys across the street and demanding to use the telephone.

He shot and killed Jason Rasmussen, the 33-year-old manager, and wounded employee Josh Parker, 23. The gunman fatally shot a man in the parking lot and shot a woman while trying to carjack her vehicle.

Separately, five people were killed in suburban Pittsburgh April 28 by a gunman. Thao Pham, 30, and Ji-Ye Sun, 34, employees at a Chinese restaurant in McKees Rocks, were shot and killed.

Suspect Richard Baumhammers, 34, was arrested that afternoon. Three others died in the attacks: a Jewish woman who lived next door to Baumhammers, an Indian man at a grocery store and a black man at a karate school.

Another Indian man was wounded. The FBI joined the investigation to determine if federal hate crimes were committed.