“By all appearances, Ocampo had deep affinity for the homeless. He sacrificed for them and even put their needs ahead of his own. Those close to him say the killings do not match the character of the person they knew. ”
It’s a well-known phenomenon that people often interpret other people’s actions differently than the way others interpret their own actions. Typically observers attribute them to character while the observed attributes them to the demands of a situation. Friends of Ocampo, who recently returned from Iraq, say that he often gave what little money he had to help homeless people while members of his family went without. The people he was living with just before the killings say he was having paranoid hallucinations and seeing threats around every corner. This leads to my theory about Ocampo. I know that Marine training instills a show of stoicism in the face of threat. What others saw as a devoted brother picking up his kid sister from the library every day ..he saw as a military action through hostile territory. It’s not hard to imagine homeless people on the streets of Orange County resembling insurgents on the roadsides of Iraq to a returning veteran. His solution may have been to eliminate them to keep his sister safe ..as well as avenge the recent death of a close friend in Iraq.
Revision: Today’s newspaper reports that Ocampo never saw action in Iraq. His job was to inspect the bodies of casualties when they were flown in from combat. Orange County officials have another theory. They say he was on a ‘serial thrill-kill’ spree ..enjoying the sensationalism of press coverage and increasing the stakes with each attack. Perhaps civilian life just wasn’t as surreal. Well, so much for yesterday’s theories. Shows how insubstantial they can be.
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