One of the San Jose railyard workers killed last week was heading home after his shift when he was gunned down, his widow revealed in a tearful interview.
“He was off shift … he had already started up his truck,” Terra Fritch told ABC 30 of her husband of 19 years, Alex Fritch.
“He was 5 feet away from the door — away from this, and being home with me,” she said with tears running down her neck.
“I think hurts more than anything. Because he was not supposed to be there. He got off at 6:30 a.m.,” she said of the mass shooting by a fellow railyard worker, Samuel Cassidy, that started minutes later.
While eight others were pronounced dead at the scene, Fritch died hours later, clutching his wife’s hand in a hospital bed, his widow said.
Fritch died clutching his wife’s hand in a hospital bed, she said. Instagram“He actually moved his wrist and grabbed my hand,” Terra Fritch told ABC 30. “He had tears coming out of both of his eyes and I felt him pass. I literally felt it.
“He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to be here with me,” she said.
She gave the interview in the tiki bar her 49-year-old husband built at their San Jose home — dubbed the “Fred and Ginger Exotic Rum and Cocktail Bar.”
“He put in every single nail, every single screw,” she said of her husband’s “labor of love.”
Alex and Terra Fritch were married for 19 years. Instagram“This is where I feel the closest to him. I’m just so thankful that I have it because he really, really loved this bar,” she said, saying she will likely never leave the house to keep hold of those memories.
Mass shooter Cassidy carried “a black memo book filled with lots of notes” about hating his place of work, and was reportedly questioned by federal agents years before the slaughter.
Authorities at the Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, Calif., on May 27, 2021. A day earlier, a gunman killed nine people at the VTA. APHe had amassed a terrifying arsenal, and his rampage reportedly came hours before he was due to attend a work disciplinary hearing for alleged racist comments.
As well as Fritch, Cassidy killed Paul Delacruz Megia, 42, Taptejdeep Singh, 36, Adrian Balleza, 29, Jose Dejesus Hernandez, 35, Timothy Michael Romo, 49, Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40, Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63, and Lars Kepler Lane, 63.
He then shot himself dead when he was cornered by officers, authorities have said.
Alex Fritch and his wife, Terra. Instagram