Dozens of family members and friends gathered Tuesday night to mark the 10th anniversary of the worst mass shooting in Orange County history when eight people were killed inside a Seal Beach salon.
After the memorial in honor of those killed at Salon Meritage, they walked to the Seal Beach Pier with small candles and remembered the lives lost by tossing flowers into the Pacific Ocean.
Hattie Stretz was having her hair done by her daughter inside Salon Meritage. She was shot, her daughter Laura Webb was killed. The gunman, Scott Dekraai would murder eight people that October day.
"It's not like it feels like 10 years ago since I saw her or hugged her. It feels like yesterday. It's like time stopped and you’re trapped in this time bubble," Bethany Webb said.
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Webb said her sister was her everything. She proudly wears her portrait in a tattoo.
"I want her to be remembered. She had so much life left to live," she said.
Looking back, Webb isn’t sure why the tragedy affected so many, whether it was the shock that it happened in a small seaside town or that strangers could relate because it happened in a hair salon.
"Some told me where they were what they were doing and how they felt. And they don’t have any ties but will never forget where they were that day," she said.
Dekraai and his ex-wife were in the middle of a custody dispute over their son. Michelle Fournier was the first person he killed.
He pleaded guilty. But it would take seven years before he was sentenced to life without parole.
Webb says says she has a permanent hole in her heart and asked us to do one thing for this story; read their names: Victoria Buzzo, David Caouette, Randy Fannin, Michelle Fast, Michelle Fournier, Lucia Kondas, Christy Wilson, Laura Webb.
