Eight months ago, Davance Lamar Reed allegedly opened fire at a Marin County detox center, killing an employee and injuring two other victims.
Now he has the added distinction of being a data point for the U.S. Secret Service.
The agency’s National Threat Assessment Center has included Reed’s case in a new report, “Mass Attacks in Public Spaces – 2018.”
This puts his case in the company of infamous massacres such as the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh and the school rampage in Parkland, Florida. The report includes 27 incidents involving 91 fatalities and 107 injured victims.
The report, a followup to another study in 2017, aims to find commonalities among mass attacks as a tool for training and prevention. It defines a mass attack as one with three or more victims in settings such as schools, places of worship, government buildings and workplaces.
“The violence described in this report is not the result of a single cause or motive,” the report said. “The findings emphasize, however, that we can identify warning signs prior to an act of violence.
“While not every act of violence will be prevented, this report indicates that targeted violence may be preventable, if appropriate systems are in place to identify concerning behaviors, gather information to assess the risk of violence, and utilize community resources to mitigate the risk.”
The report found that two-thirds of the attackers had histories of mental illness, half were motivated by a grievance and most used guns. Most attacks happened at workplaces, and almost all were committed by males.
Further, the report said, “nearly all made threatening or concerning communications and more than three-quarters elicited concern from others prior to carrying out their attacks.”
The Marin shooting occurred on Nov. 5 at the Helen Vine Recovery Center, the detox clinic in northern San Rafael. Investigators think Reed was brought there by his girlfriend for treatment.
Reed, 38, allegedly shot his girlfriend and two detox staffers. Nathan Lamont Hill, 52, of Vallejo, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Brittany Kehaulani McCann, 30, of Marin City, was critically injured. She is a substance abuse counselor and has a young son with Reed.
Anthony Dominguez Mansapit, 32, was also critically injured. Reed allegedly fled the crime scene in Mansapit’s car and was arrested two hours later after a pursuit in Sonoma County.
The Marin County District Attorney’s Office charged Reed with one count of murder; two counts of attempted murder; relationship violence; vehicle theft; recklessly evading police; and possession of a semi-automatic firearm by a felon.
His prior record includes drug and firearms offenses in San Francisco, Monterey County, Lassen County and Nevada, the prosecution said. Authorities described Reed as a transient with ties to Marin City and Vallejo.
Reed has pleaded not guilty, and a preliminary hearing on the evidence is scheduled for September.
On Reed’s inclusion in the federal report, his lawyer, David Brown, said: “While I cannot comment on the specifics of Mr. Reed’s case, a common thread in two thirds of the shootings addressed in the report is mental illness which is often untreated. The issues surrounding mass shootings are not only about crime and punishment. Society also need to address availability of care for the mentally ill and access to guns.”
The report also included the March 9, 2018, slaying of three mental health workers at a veterans home in Yountville. The victims were Christine Loeber, 48, executive director of the Pathway Home, a residential community that provides mental health services for veterans transitioning to civilian life, Pathway’s clinical psychologist Jennifer Gonzales Shushereba, 32, who was seven months pregnant, and Jennifer Gray Golick, 42, a clinical director at the program. Golick was a featured speaker at a 2016 packed Marin forum on youth and marijuana.
The gunman, identified by authorities as 36-year-old Albert Cheung Wong of Sacramento, an Army veteran, fatally shot himself.
Members of the National Threat Assessment Center briefed police, public safety and school officials at a seminar on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
“We want the community to know prevention is everyone’s responsibility,” said Lina Alathari, the center’s chief. “Not just law enforcement.”
Alathari said her team is working on a new report on school shootings and how to prevent them, and investigating averted attacks to try to figure out why someone didn’t follow through.
“There is not a single solution,” she said. “The more that we’re out there, training, the more we’re out there with the community … the more we share information … I think it will help really alleviate and hopefully prevent even one incident from happening. One is too many.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
