Parents stand by son accused in grocery store shooting

Friday, July 7, 2000 | 12:36 p.m.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAS VEGAS - Two days after Zane Floyd surrendered to police outside a local supermarket where four employees were shot to death, his parents visited him at the Clark County Detention Center.

Mike and Valerie Floyd said their son looked like a stranger that day last year. His eyes were blank, and he spoke in a monotone.

"Go away. Just forget about me. I'm worthless. You don't want anything to do with me," 50-year-old Mike Floyd recalled his son saying.

The parents told their now 24-year-old son that his family would never desert him.

"We reassured him that that was not going to happen. You don't turn your back on the people you love at their very lowest point," Valerie Floyd said.

The couple said the person who was their son began to re-emerge after several weeks of regular jail visits. His capital murder trial is scheduled to begin July 11.

In the face of evidence that includes store security videotape and Zane Floyd's own statements to police, the parents do not contend that their son stands wrongly accused. Nor do they have any desire to discount the suffering of the victims and their families.

"I wish I could fix it for everybody," said Valerie Floyd, 54, who lost her only other child to sudden infant death syndrome about 25 years ago. "I really know how these people feel, and I would give anything for them not to feel that way."

The parents said they decided to break their long public silence in the hope that people will await all the facts and avoid forming snap opinions about the appropriate fate for their son.

"We love him very much. He is still very loved by everyone in the family. Those of us who know him know that wasn't him. We had never seen that side of him before," Valerie Floyd said.

Prosecutors say Zane Floyd walked into the Albertson's, now a Raley's market, at about 5:16 a.m. on June 3, 1999, and opened fire with a shotgun he carried in a 10-minute walk from his parents' home.

The store's videotape captured the gunman shooting 40-year-old Thomas Michael Darnell in the back. Darnell, known for his kindness to customers and fellow employees, died near the front entrance.

Carlos "Chuck" Leos, 41, who worked two jobs and had just celebrated his first wedding anniversary, was the next person slain.

Dennis Troy Sargent, 31, a store supervisor who left a young son, then was killed by a single shotgun blast.

The gunman then chased 21-year-old Zachary Emenegger, felling him with two blasts. The young man feigned lifelessness, and the gunman moved on after saying, "Yeah, you're dead," prosecutors say. Though seriously injured, Emenegger survived.

The gunman then went to the rear of the store, where Lucille Alice Tarantino begged him not to kill her. A shotgun blast from close range ended the life of the woman whose family had just celebrated her 60th birthday with a surprise party at Lake Tahoe.

More than a year later, Mike and Valerie Floyd don't have an answer to the question each has mulled for hours.

"There is no doubt that it happened. What we would like to find out is why it happened," Mike Floyd said.

As described by his parents, the childhood of Zane Floyd was neither idyllic nor horrific.

He was born premature in Estes Park, Colo., high in the Rocky Mountains north of Denver. A Flight for Life helicopter carried him to a children's hospital in Denver, where he remained in an incubator for five days.

His natural father soon abandoned the family and his mother met and married Mike Floyd, who legally adopted Zane Floyd shortly after the boy turned 5.

Mike Floyd enlisted in the Navy, and the family accompanied him to bases in Connecticut, Virginia and South Carolina.

After an injury ended his military career, Mike Floyd moved the family to California, where Valerie Floyd and her son spent many an hour in the large garden behind the family home.

The family moved to Las Vegas in 1988, lured by a business opportunity for Mike Floyd. After arriving in Las Vegas, the parents brought their son to a child psychiatrist.

"We were beginning to recognize that there were problems," Valerie Floyd said.

She said her son was not violent nor prone to serious trouble. But frustration with his ongoing academic difficulties caused him to disrupt class, his mother said.

He was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder, and his behavior improved after Ritalin was prescribed, the parents said.

He also began attending counseling sessions with a child psychiatrist. The experience seemed beneficial, though his parents said they wish they had been advised to seek long-term treatment.

"We wanted him to be as happy as he could be," Valerie Floyd said.

Zane Floyd attended public schools in Las Vegas with mixed success, but his performance improved after his parents enrolled him at Faith Lutheran Junior-Senior High School.

"The more structured environment Zane was ever in, the better he did," his mother said.

In 1994, Zane Floyd enrolled in the Marine Corps, losing 62 pounds in basic training but deriving a welcome sense of accomplishment. He was stationed for several years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and later served as an instructor at Camp Pendleton in California.

Though he received an honorable discharge in July 1998, Floyd later would tell police that his superiors were not happy with his performance, and he was not welcome to re-enlist.

He briefly attended college, held and lost several security-related jobs and ultimately moved into a guest home behind his parent's house.

He told police the shootings followed a night of drinking, gambling and deep introspection about the sorry state of his life. "I've just always wanted to know what it's like to shoot someone," he told a detective.

Unaware of the nearby shooting, Valerie Floyd had just walked outside when seven police cars converged on her home. Throughout the day, officers and family friends brought news of the shootings.

The parents regularly shopped at the store and recognized the names of Tarantino and Leos. "I knew them. I said hello to them most of the times I was in there," Valerie Floyd said.

The parents did not turn their television on until that night, when they were greeted with footage of their camouflage-clad son being taken into custody outside the store.

"That didn't look like him. He was staring glassy-eyed. He was mumbling," Mike Floyd said. "Something snapped. Something went wrong."

"Terribly wrong," his wife added.

Both parents said they were paralyzed in the days after the shooting by the realization that there was nothing they could do for their son or his victims. Their only public comment at the time came through a friend who said their thoughts were with the victims' families.

"You can't fix it. You can't make it better," Valerie Floyd said. "We can't do much for him, except be there."

In the months that followed, they searched their memories for clues that would help them understand their son's actions.

"You go through self-analysis. What did I do wrong? What else could I have done?" Mike Floyd said. "You eventually come to the realization that you did everything you did to the best of your ability."

Some people had harsh words for the parents after the shootings. Far more responded with kindness, including people who had never met them or their son.

The strain became too much for Valerie Floyd, and the couple sold their home and moved to a location they chose not to disclose. "She needed to get away," Mike Floyd said.

The couple will be back in court for the murder trial, an experience Valerie Floyd dreads.

"To think that our child could do that. That is going to be pretty hard to take, but we are still a family."

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