Suspect was boy next door, friends and family say they are shocked

Tim Dahlberg

Thursday, June 3, 1999 | 10:22 a.m.

To those who knew him, Zane Floyd was the boy next door who played basketball and chased lizards with the neighborhood kids before leaving to join the Marine Corps. His doting parents grew excited every time their only child was due home on leave.

The muscular 23-year-old liked to party with friends from the sports bar where he worked one day a week as a bouncer. He spent part of Memorial Day weekend laughing and joking with them at a swim party and barbeque.

"A total gentleman and a good natured person," as one former boss described him. By Wednesday night, though, something had changed.

Fired three weeks earlier from a $7 an hour security guard job, Floyd appeared agitated and upset as he went to the offices of Affirmed Security to pick up a final paycheck and sign papers that read "Do Not Rehire."

A few hours later, police say, he roamed in camouflage fatigues through a neighborhood supermarket with a pump-action shotgun, shooting at anyone he saw. When the carnage was over, blood smeared the aisles of the Albertsons and four people were dead.

There was talk of a relationship gone bad with a stripper and of a gun-loving friend who may have led him astray.

But none of that made much sense Thursday to those who knew Floyd as a friendly, happy man who only last weekend moved back into a guest house at his parents' home and had high hopes for the future.

His mother cried in a bedroom as friends came to console the parents. His father opened the door to let people in, but neither was talking.

"They're just devastated, shocked," said neighbor Cathy Downey. "It's beyond anyone to know how this could happen."

Downey, whose grandson would play in the schoolyard across the street with Floyd before he joined the Marines, went inside the house to offer condolences and a hug to Mike and Valerie Floyd.

"They were so proud of him because he was in the Marines and all they talked about was when he was coming home on leave," Downey said. "He was their pride and joy. They did everything for him."

Also with the parents was Tony Marquez, who worked with Floyd at Sneakers bar and restaurant, and partied with him after hours.

Marquez said he helped Floyd move from an apartment he shared with another man over the weekend, and the two went to a pool party and barbeque. On Tuesday night they worked together at Sneakers, he said, then went out to other bars afterward.

"He's just a regular guy who likes to party and hang out like me," Marquez said. "He's a good guy. I just can't understand it."

At Affirmed Security, where Floyd worked for a few months, owner Laura Sellers said he was a model employee who passed several weapons and background checks before being hired to patrol apartment complexes and serve as security at various functions.

But Sellers said Floyd, who was to get a raise to $8 an hour because he was doing such a good job, started missing shifts and acting differently after awhile. She finally fired him May 14, but he didn't return for his final check until Wednesday night.

"We're not looking at a bad boy or someone who would go insane at all," Sellers said. "In all honesty, he didn't have any real quirks. This guy would remind you of the guy next door."