When Darnell Collins was sober, he was attentive and playful. When he was high on cocaine, he became a jealous madman.
And when he found out his former girlfriend told his parole officer he had violated a restraining order, he snapped. What came next was a murderous rampage that left seven people dead and two others critically injured from Atlantic City to New York City.Collins, 33, was killed Wednesday in a blazing shootout with police. "It was a quick ending to an extraordinarily violent episode," New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said at a news conference originally called to warn the public that a crazed killer was on the loose.
The string of bloody crimes began Saturday, when Collins gunned down his former girlfriend's mother in Atlantic City, then went to a friend's house and killed his former girlfriend, April Gates, with a .22-caliber revolver.
"He was a drug addict. When he used drugs, he was always abusing her. He'd put a gun to her head, threaten her, threaten her mother," said Alicia Chappell, a friend who witnessed the killings.
"When he came in here, the first thing he said was `Why did you tell?' " she said, pointing to bloodstained carpeting and a bullet hole behind the couch.
She said Collins was unemployed, living off the profits he made buying decorative framed pictures in New York City and reselling them on the street in Atlantic City.
He was pleasant as long as there were no other men around Gates, Chappell said. "He'd sit, laugh, talk, play. If there was men around, he'd think they'd want her or she'd want them," she said.
After the first two killings, Collins drove Gates' car to Monroe Township, where he fatally shot a drug dealer and stabbed a woman, who was in critical condition Thursday morning.
Collins then fled to New York City, where he had family. On Tuesday, he killed a Manhattan parking a lot attendant in an apparent robbery attempt, authorities said.
He then ran into a nearby building, where he killed a salesman and an architect in an elevator and escaped through a freight elevator.
Several hours later, Collins shot a woman in the head at a Harlem crack house, critically wounding her, then killed a cab driver while stealing his car, police said.
Collins was spotted in a cab Wednesday morning by Newark police responding to a report of a man on the street with a gun. "Apparently he panicked when he saw the police car, and that was his mistake," said Essex County Prosecutor Clifford Minor.
Collins led police on a half-hour chase to Nutley, where he crashed the car and ran into a park. He died exchanging gunfire with police.
Collins was paroled in January 1994 after serving nine years of a 20-year sentence for an armed robbery, according to the Corrections Department. In September, he spent two weeks in jail after turning himself in for cocaine use.
People in his Atlantic City hometown were comforted by news of his demise.
"It's such a relief, I'm telling you," said Jenny Williams, 71, who knew April Gates' mother for 30 years.
"People been scared. `Go inside and close your door.' Now I'm rejoicing. Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice."
"I would like to shake the cops' hands who took him out," said another neighbor, Michael Johnson. "I'd like to walk them through the community and have them shake hands with everybody."