MERCED, Calif. (AP) -- A stranger broke into a farmhouse, terrorized five
children who were home alone and stabbed two of them to death with a pitchfork
before he was shot and killed by sheriff's deputies.
Three girls, including one who was bleeding from puncture wounds, escaped
through windows of the house during the attack Wednesday morning and ran across
farm fields to a neighbor's home, where they called 911.
''It's such a shock,'' the children's father, John Carpenter, said Thursday.
''You keep pinching yourself. I got to wake up.''
Authorities said they knew of no connection between the family and the
attacker, Jonathon David Bruce, 27, of Merced. He was identified through
fingerprint records from a 1999 arrest for being under the influence of
methamphetamine and fighting with police.
A woman who used to live near Bruce said he hated children.
The attack occurred while the children's parents were out of the house, about
60 miles north of Fresno. Carpenter, 34, was at work at the time, and his wife,
Tephanie Carpenter, 34, had taken her car in to have the brakes checked.
''It's worse than any horror you could imagine,'' said Priscilla Hilton, 20,
a cousin of the victims.
About 8 a.m., the oldest daughter, Jessica, 14, found a naked man in the
living room, pulling his pants on. He had pushed furniture against the walls of
the house to barricade himself and the children in.
Jessica, speaking at a news conference at a Merced hospital with her parents
and sister Anna, said she ran to her room and locked herself in. The man banged
on her door, she said. She picked up the phone to call for help, but the line
was dead.
That's when she heard a cry, she said. She escaped through a window to a
neighbor's house, cutting her bare feet on a coarse farm field along the way. No
one was home, and when she returned to her house, Anna, 13, and sister Vanessa,
11, were fleeing, too, saying the man was attacking the remaining two children
with a pitchfork.
Anna said the man had told her to lie down, then jabbed the pitchfork at her,
cutting her hands when she tried to defend herself.
''He looked possessed,'' she said Thursday, her bandaged hands hugging a
teddy bear.
The youngest girl, Ashley, 9, had come in from another room and yelled,
''Stop it!'' When the attacker turned his attention to Ashley, Anna and Vanessa
ran down a hallway, pushing a bookshelf out of the way to get into a laundry
room, where they locked themselves in.
The man came to the door and said, ''Let me in, I'll be nice to you,'' Anna
said. The girls fled through a window in the laundry room and went to a
neighbor's house, where they called 911.
''They could hear Ashley screaming as they were running, and then she went
quiet,'' the father said.
On her call to the 911 dispatcher, Jessica said: ''There's somebody in my
house who I don't know. (He's) stabbing my brother and sister with a pitchfork.
You have to be careful, he's going to kill them.''
When deputies arrived, they entered the house through a front window and saw
the assailant coming at them with the pitchfork.
''He was pointing it at them and going right after them, he wouldn't stop,''
said Assistant Sheriff Henry Strength. ''They were hollering at him to stop, but
he wouldn't stop. Finally they had to shoot him.''
Deputies fired 16 rounds at Bruce, hitting him 13 times, Strength said. An
initial series of shots knocked Bruce to the floor, but he began to get up again
with the pitchfork, prompting the final blasts, Strength said.
Ashley and 7-year-old John William Carpenter were found dead in their beds.
The boy apparently had been asleep during the attack.
Before being evicted last month, Bruce lived in a duplex behind Ann Adams'
house in downtown Merced. Adams said the man frequently yelled at her three
great-grandchildren and his girlfriend's three children, who all played
together.
She said Bruce had worked part-time as a telemarketer, but mostly stayed up
late at night and paced around the neighborhood after the girlfriend took her
children and moved out.
''He just sort of went downhill,'' Adams said. ''He was just getting angrier
and angrier.''
John Carpenter said he hoped Ashley, who loved horses and hiking and ''had
little black eyes that just sparkled'' could be buried alongside her little
brother, whom he described as ''mister calm, mister independent.''
Anna's hands are healing, and Jessica and Vanessa weren't physically hurt in
the attack. The family doesn't plan to return to their home, John Carpenter
said, though he said he was hanging on to something to be grateful for.
''I've got three daughters alive,'' he said. ''There are people who have had
it worse, come home to nothing.''
''Somewhere there's a Mom and Dad somewhere feeling sorrowful like I am,'' he
said, referring to the killer's parents. ''I'd rather be on my end. Can you
imagine having a son like that?''
