It could have happened to any family enjoying a peaceful dinner out. Three years ago, the lives of a 12-year-old girl, a young father, a talented musician, a waiter and a killer collided at a popular family restaurant.
The violence and randomness of the Chevys shootings captured Utahns' attention as few cases have.
Deseret Morning News special projects reporter Lucinda Dillon Kinkead spent three months investigating this case. This week in a four-part series, "Crossing Paths With a Killer," she tells the powerful stories of victims who met Quinn Robert Martinez that April night and how that encounter changed their lives. And she examines how Martinez, a middle-class young man from an LDS family, turned to meth and murder.
There is a Friday night feeling in the air, although it is Thursday.
Birthdays are like that, and Whitney's big brother turns 17 today. Dinner at Chevys Fresh Mex restaurant was fun, and now her family is headed to Snowbird resort for the night. It is a special weeknight treat, and Whitney and Dad are riding in the Berg family Bonneville. Mom drove her own car to the restaurant, and she and PJ, the birthday boy, are going on their own up the mountain.
There are no goodbyes as the family parts ways, just a quick "we'll follow you."
Twelve-year-old Whitney Berg fiddles with her Sony Discman in the front seat and chides Peter Berg, 43, in the moments that pass as he settles behind the wheel.
Whitney feels the passenger door open and sees the gun at the same time. She takes in the man with baggy pants and a blue, button-down shirt behind the handgun. She hears his order: "Get out of the car." Then louder. "Get out of the car!"
Watching Dad obey, Whitney does the same.
"Give me the keys!" the man with a goatee shouts, rounding the back of the car and advancing toward Peter Berg.
In seconds, Whitney watches Dad toss the car keys away from the car. She sees the flash as the assailant responds, firing two shots that pound her father in the shoulder and chest, and watches as he falls to the pavement.
Whitney screams.
The gunman scrambles to look for the car keys, then returns to her critically injured father.
"Go get the keys," he tells Berg as the wounded man struggles to rise. "They're over there," Peter Berg says, nodding away from him, away from Whitney.
Agitated by drinking and two weeks of shooting meth, the gunman trains his weapon and shouts at the wounded man who can't possibly follow the order. "Go get the keys!" he yells, even as Peter Berg collapses to the ground.
"Daddy, Daddy are you OK!?" Whitney cries. She can't move. She doesn't know what to do. The girl is paralyzed just long enough to watch as the gunman gives up on Peter's keys and runs through the restaurant parking lot with another victim in his sights. She stands stock still as he yells at the driver of a Chevy Tahoe, then fires through the driver's side window.
Then she runs. Past the cartoon car that is the Chevys Fresh Mex trademark. Into the restaurant. Into another grisly crime scene. She sees another man's body on the floor — the first victim to cross the path of the killer that night. Whitney stops, taking in the hysterical waitresses and the wailing diners, then screams into the mayhem.
"Help, somebody, please! My dad's been shot!"
One year ago this summer, Quinn Robert Martinez, 24, was sentenced to life in prison for what are now known as the Chevys shootings.
April 27, 2000, after smoking and injecting meth on and off for two weeks, Martinez emptied eight rounds from a handgun during a rampage that left two people dead at the popular east-side restaurant, three critically injured and dozens of people traumatized.
The shooting took less than five minutes. But hundreds of people like Peter Berg crossed the path of a killer that night — and all say they will never be the same.
Like Joshua Parker, who recovered from his gunshot wound but still carries a bullet near his spine.
Like Steve Meltzer, a clergyman who had to relearn forgiveness.
Like Christy Bond, who saw a friend shot and moved far away to forget.
Like Whitney and PJ Berg, who are still learning to live without Dad.
Like Jan Petty, who will never look at a dinner out the same again.
Like Debbie Briggs, a reserved woman whose face has been repaired but whose psyche has not.
Like Alan Rasmussen, whose son Jason was killed that night. "It's not something you get over," he says.
Dozens of people saw Quinn Martinez shoot two people inside Chevys.
A handful more saw what happened outside as Martinez, wanted by police, tried to hijack car after car, killing Berg in front of his daughter and shooting Briggs in the face as he tried to get away.
One day earlier, Martinez, his sister SeAnn Martinez, girlfriend Jamie Lucero and another man had checked into a hotel room a half-block south of Chevys. All four are several miles from home, avoiding parole violations in the Fort Union business district where hotels, restaurants and shopping areas line 1300 East.
By Thursday evening, Quinn is strung out on drugs. He's been in and out of the hotel room all day and argues with his girlfriend when he returns. She had borrowed a car, and the owner wants it back. But Quinn has had the vehicle for most of the day; she isn't about to let him take off again.
The two argue heatedly.
"You better shut the f--- up or I'm going to blast you," Quinn tells her.
"Do what you gotta do," Lucero responds.
So Quinn Martinez shoots her in the right leg, then levels the gun at Lucero's torso. "I should kill you, bitch."
Quinn leaves Room 339 of the Extended Stay Hotel instead of following through with his threat. Lucero, limping on her wounded leg, and SeAnn Martinez stumble down an outside staircase toward a car that will take them to the hospital. Near the car, Lucero hears a gunshot, then sees Martinez with the gun. He's come down a different set of stairs to intercept them in the parking lot.
"I'm going to kill you if you don't give me the keys!"
But Lucero maneuvers to the other side of the car, gets in and locks the door. Shocked by Quinn's aggression, his friend Manuel Fernandez jumps in the car, too. SeAnn Martinez starts the engine, and the last thing they see as the car speeds away is Quinn Martinez walking north toward Chevys.
Inside the bustling restaurant on that April evening Martinez tries to use the phone at the hostess station and draws little attention at first.
"That phone doesn't dial out," Josh Parker tells the man. A Chevys waiter for about six months, Parker's section at the back is slow, and he is looking for the manager. Probably time to go home, he thinks. Martinez catches Parker's attention before he finds the manager.
"Where's a phone that does work?" Martinez raises his voice.
"There's a pay phone behind you. You can use that one."
"You're lying. Let me use it," Martinez says as Chevys manager Jason Rasmussen spots the dispute and walks over.
Martinez grows increasingly agitated as the 32-year-old Rasmussen confirms that Martinez will need to use a pay phone.
"You're lying," Martinez says, reaching under his shirt and pulling out a black .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun.
"Give me the phone or I'm going to shoot you." From 4 feet away, Martinez extends his arm and points the weapon at Rasmussen's head. Rasmussen ducks behind the hostess desk, and as Josh Parker looks on, Martinez yells and swears.
"Don't shoot me, I'll find you a phone," Rasmussen says, but as he crouches down, Martinez lowers his arm and fires at the manager, who slumps to the floor.
He then turns the gun on the dumbfounded waiter and shoots him in the left side of the chest, the bullet grazing his heart and lung but leaving him standing.
As Parker turns to run, Martinez leaves the building to find a car and sees a Ford Escort leaving the Chevys parking lot.
Inside the Escort, Richard Reep hears a popping noise as he loads his daughter and an elderly relative into the car after dinner. The family has been at Chevys to celebrate his wife's birthday. Reep looks up to see people scattering in front of Chevys. A prank, he thinks. Children playing with firecrackers. Behind the wheel and backing out his car, he hears a couple more pops.
As his vehicle heads toward the exit, a man appears in front of Reep's car and shouts at them to stop.
"Give me the car! Get out of the car!" Martinez yells.
Reep slows his car, but he sees the gun cradled to Martinez's chest. In a split-second, the gunman has his hand out to stop the car and trains the weapon on Reep.
But as Martinez steps around toward the driver's side, Reep stomps on the accelerator and speeds away.
And this is where Martinez's path crosses that of Whitney and her dad.
The killer guns down 43-year-old Peter Berg in the parking lot while the father tries to divert the gunman's attention away from Whitney. Moments later, the killer tries to carjack Briggs' SUV.
Chatting with her grown daughter, Briggs had pulled into the parking space about a minute earlier but a commotion near the entrance catches her eye. It looks like people arguing. When she sees what looks like sparks from a gun as a man grabs his chest and falls to the ground, she turns to her daughter and screams, "Let's get out of here!"
But in the second it takes to turn the ignition and put the car in reverse, Martinez strides toward her, then stands at the woman's closed window. "Get out of the car!" Briggs sees him yell as she struggles to get the car in gear. As the woman tries to drive away, Martinez shoots through the window into her face at point blank range — the blast showering her daughter with glass and blood.
Briggs feels stuff in her mouth. Teeth or bones, she finds out later, and warm blood gushes down her face as she guns out of the lot.
Within minutes, more than 40 officers from five different police agencies race to the Fort Union restaurant.
Quinn Martinez is gone by the time they arrive, hiding out not far away at a friend's home.
Under a spectacle of flashing lights, police cars block 1300 East in some places. Helicopters rumble overhead. Sirens echo and police radios bark the latest reports of more shots fired at the hotel next door. Another gunshot victim at a convenience store down the street. Yet another person injured a block away near Creek Road.
Police try to control the chaos, taping off Peter Berg's body and an area where someone had seen Martinez ditch his gun as he ran away.
No one is allowed to leave, and police keep parking lots full of patrons from Chevys and nearby Sweet Tomatoes restaurant there while officers sort out witness statements and determine the shooter isn't among them.
It isn't long before a crowd forms. Many of the people trapped inside the cordoned-off crime scene have cell phones. The family members they call and others who see news bulletins on local television show up at the scene to line 1300 East three and four people deep.
Heading north on 1300 East, Sandy police detective Travis Peterson crests a hill above the restaurant, looks down at the scene and registers a quick thought: It looks like Las Vegas.
The random violence of the Chevys shootings captured Utahns' attention like few cases have.
"That's why it pricked the conscience of the community. Who expects a crime like this to happen at a family restaurant?" said Salt Lake County Deputy District Attorney Bob Stott from his downtown office.
Certainly not the Berg family. PJ turned 17 on that day, which is forever marked also as the anniversary of his dad's death.
Not Christy Bond, 27, who was bartending at Chevys that night and called police while Martinez was still shooting outside. She moved to Hawaii one month after the shootings. She quit her job, got rid of her car, grabbed her 2-year-old and a box of summer clothes and moved off the mainland.
"Things are fine now, but that's the reason I live in Maui," she said. "When you go through something as traumatic as that, you have to turn the reality part of your brain off."
Not Jerry Guenon, who was a patron at the restaurant that night, sitting with his wife and two young children only a few yards from the reception area where Martinez shot two men. He says his wife left him a month after the shooting because her husband failed, she thought, to adequately protect his wife and children.
And not Sandy police chaplain Steve Meltzer, who spent that evening at the Berg family's side.
He has seen his share of misery over the years, but he says his involvement in the aftermath of the Chevys shootings proved to be the greatest test of his own faith. In 12 years as a clergyman, no case has been as difficult.
"As a Christian, I am not supposed to have the feelings I had. I should have been modeling an attitude of forgiveness."
But instead of leading the "debriefing" meetings, where law enforcement officials process their feelings about traumatic events, Meltzer himself needed help and counseling.
"I had to go through a debriefing process myself. I was pounding the table. I wanted to hurt him," he said. "Even three years later, I get angry at that person."
"This case was all about the victims," said Stott, who spent two years preparing the capital case for Salt Lake County. "They all shared the tragedy, the awfulness of this bizarre crime that happened in a place where most people think they are safe."
As it turned out, several pockets of people were caught up in the horror of the shooting.
The last person Martinez shot, Briggs, was able to drive away from Chevys with a shattered jawbone. She saw lights at a convenience store up the street and ended up tumbling from her SUV at the Maverik Station a few hundred yards north of the restaurant. She spit out a mouthful of blood and teeth and bones as she did.
Josh Parker, the wounded waiter, ran from the shooting scene. In immense pain and with a grueling pressure in his chest, Parker stumbled through the kitchen and followed others from the kitchen staff who heard shots and ran to escape. He ran out the back door, through a side lot and down a hillside before collapsing in a yard in the tony suburban neighborhood near Creek Road.
Many people saw the shootings firsthand. Others tried to help the victims as they bled.
In the aftermath of this tragedy, waves of victims whisper their stories.
There is the story of the Berg family's ongoing healing — Whitney, now 15; PJ, 20; and mom, Loydene, who move forward with their lives but not so far that they leave father and husband, Peter Berg, too far behind.
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There is the story of Jason Rasmussen's family, which tries to put as much space and silence as possible between now and the events of that night. This is a family so injured that answering questions about that night is invasive and wounding.
For others close to the shootings, the tragedy left behind hard lessons of remorse, dozens of life changes and cases where the trauma of the shooting triggered old addictions with fatal consequences.
Some find catharsis in talking about what occurred. Others want to leave the night of April 27, 2000, far behind them.
Also, there is the poignant story of the Martinez family, forever trapped in the consequences of their son's actions.
Ultimately, after two years of delays, the victims' families agreed to accept a plea agreement that guarantees Quinn Martinez will spend the rest of his life in prison. As inmate No. 30247 at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Martinez refused numerous requests for interviews by the Deseret Morning News.
When sentenced one year ago, Quinn Martinez offered his only public comment about his actions.
"No matter what I say, I know it will be inadequate," Quinn said. "I especially want to let Whitney Berg know I am so sorry for what I made you go through and watch, and everyone else, too."
Whitney Berg is older now. She is less the chubby-faced girl who watched a drug-crazed man shoot her father and more a young woman making her way in the the world. A teenager learning to drive and hanging out with friends, she tries to move beyond the memories of that April night despite reminders — the "triggers"— she encounters every day.
Strangers. Anyone who looks like Quinn. Four-way stops. "And things in threes," Whitney Berg said recently from her Mountain Green home. "Threes drive me nuts."
Question: Do you remember just one shot or —
Answer: Three
Question: Were they all together?
Answer: (Whitney nods head.)
Question: What did your dad do?
Answer: Fell.
Question: What did you do?
Answer: I was screaming.
— Excerpts from court testimony, Salt Lake County Deputy District Attorney Bob Stott's interview with Whitney Berg, age 12, Aug. 16, 2000.
In Monday's Deseret Morning News: How the Berg family is healing after losing husband and father Peter Berg in the Chevys shootings. Also, Jason Rasmussen's parents heard brutal details of their son's death in court and are still recovering. The stories of two families' journey through sorrow and anger.
E-mail: lucy@desnews.com