Another young woman suffered an injury while escaping from the second floor.
The fact that more children did not die was remarkable.
Many had been positioned toward the back of the house when the shooting began.
Adults pulled them away.
Some relatives climbed walls into neighboring yards.
Others ran through whatever exit they could reach.
In the confusion, there was no organized evacuation plan.
People simply reacted.
And those reactions saved lives.
The Ortega family had entered Christmas Eve together.
By Christmas morning, an entire branch of that family had been devastated.
Parents.
Children.
Spouses.
A grandson.
News reports at the time described 13 young people as having been left without parents because of the deaths.
But the number nine can become abstract if repeated too often.
To understand what Pardo destroyed, it helps to understand who these people were before they became victims of what newspapers would call the Covina Christmas massacre.
Papa Joe and Alicia
Joseph Ortega had built a life around family.
He and Alicia had been married for 53 years.
Their roots extended between Southern California and Torreón, Mexico.
Joseph's family had immigrated from Mexico, and he remained deeply connected to relatives there.
Alicia had been born in Torreón.
They met when they were young.
According to family history later published by the Los Angeles Times, Joseph saw Alicia when she was 17 and quickly became convinced he wanted to marry her.
They eventually moved to Los Angeles.
They raised five children.
James.
Charles.
Alicia.
Sylvia.
Leticia.
Together, Joseph and Alicia built an industrial paint business.
Their Covina home eventually became one of the centers of the extended family's social life.
Christmas parties.
Poker nights.
Pizza.
Visits.
Children.
Grandchildren.
Family friends remembered a household where affection was visible.
People walked into the room and were greeted with hugs and kisses.
Joseph collected baseball caps and enjoyed poker.
The family traveled.
They went camping.
They visited Las Vegas.
They followed horse racing.
Their house was not merely a building.
It was where an extended family repeatedly came back together.
On Christmas Eve 2008, that tradition placed many of them in the same location.
That is what made Pardo's choice of night so devastating.
He did not simply target his former wife.
He chose the family gathering.
He chose a night when he could expect the Ortega family to be together.
The Santa costume made sense because of Christmas.
The disguise allowed him to approach the front door without looking immediately threatening.
Everything about the night appears to have been chosen to exploit the family's own tradition.
This was a family that gathered together.
Pardo turned that closeness into vulnerability.
James and Teresa
James Ortega was Joseph and Alicia's oldest child.
He spent years working alongside his father at the family's paint business before opening his own operation nearby.
He still remained close enough to his father and brother that they would regularly have lunch together.
Friends remembered James as competitive from childhood.
Football.
Baseball.
Tennis.
He was the kind of person who did not like going down easily.
During the Christmas Eve attack, relatives later said James and Charles tried to rise after being wounded.
The image is consistent with how friends remembered James years earlier.
Someone who kept fighting.
James' wife Teresa was 51.
Friends described her as a caring mother to their three adult children.
She and James had built their own family.
On Christmas Eve, they came to Joseph and Alicia's house to celebrate like they had before.
They never came home.
Charles and Cheri
Charles Ortega worked in the family business as well.
Friends described him as energetic and playful.
During breaks at the paint shop, he would sometimes challenge coworkers to basketball.
He did not have to be especially good at it to enjoy competing.
Cheri had known Charles since they were teenagers.
They attended her senior prom together in 1981 and eventually married.
Friends remembered Cheri especially through her devotion to their five children.
One friend recalled Cheri appearing at school simply to bring lunch to her youngest son and check on him.
That child was still young enough to kiss his mother openly in front of other students without embarrassment.
Then Christmas Eve came.
Both parents were killed.
This is what phrases such as "nine killed" hide.
One sentence can contain five children losing both parents.
Three children losing both parents.
Grandchildren losing grandparents.
Siblings losing siblings.
A family structure collapsing simultaneously.
Alicia Ortiz and Michael
Alicia Ortiz, one of Joseph and Alicia's daughters, was 46.
She had three children.
People close to her described her as caring but serious about their education.
She insisted that her children learn Spanish properly.
Not just speaking it.
Reading.
Writing.
Understanding the language connecting them to their family's history.
Her son Michael was 17.
He was a senior at Ontario High School.
He played baseball.
He had been expected to play shortstop and pitch for the varsity team.
Friends remembered him for keeping teammates motivated when games were going badly.
He was upstairs on a computer when the attack began.
He became the youngest person killed that night.
Michael had almost an entire adult life ahead of him.
College possibilities.
Work.
Relationships.
Baseball.
Whatever came next.
All of it ended because his aunt's former husband decided to attack a family Christmas party.
Sylvia
At the center of Pardo's grievance was Sylvia.
She was 43.
She and Bruce had met in 2004 after being introduced through family connections.
At first, people around Pardo thought the relationship might be good for him.
Sylvia already had children.
She came from a close family.
Pardo was drawn to that warmth.
They married on January 29, 2006.
Pardo bought a house in Montrose.
The couple had a dog named Saki.
He attended church.
He worked as an engineer.
From the outside, it could look like a stable middle-class Southern California marriage.
But the marriage deteriorated quickly.
And to understand the massacre, investigators needed to understand why.
Who Was Bruce Jeffrey Pardo?
Bruce Pardo did not arrive on Christmas Eve with a long public history of violent arrests.
That made the attack especially difficult for people who knew him to understand.
He had built a career in engineering and technology.
He had studied computer science at California State University, Northridge.
He had worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Later, he worked in the defense and electronics industry.
Friends and coworkers described him as intelligent.
He could be charming.
He could be funny.
He enjoyed attention.
He had social relationships.
He owned vehicles.
He went to church.
He ate at local restaurants.
He could have a normal conversation with a neighbor only hours before killing nine people.
That contrast became central to the public fascination surrounding the case.
But deeper examination of Pardo's life revealed patterns that were less flattering.
Years before meeting Sylvia, Pardo had been engaged to another woman.
A large wedding was planned.
Guests had been invited.
Money had been spent.
On the wedding day, Pardo simply failed to appear.
His fiancée, his mother and his brother waited for him.
He never came.