skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Blog Archive
-
▼
2013
(110)
-
▼
March
(25)
- Enter Round 2 Match 1 scores
- Enter Round 2 Match 1 lineups
- Enter Round 1 Match 2 scores
- Enter Round 1 Match 2 lineups
- PJ Carlissimo has no regrets trading Lillard's pic...
- Enter Round 1 Match 1 Playoff scores
- Enter Line up for Round 1 Game 1 Playoffs & NIT co...
- Proposed Fantasy League Pay Outs
- Fantasy Finals History & Standings
- Enter Match 40 scores
- Enter Match 40 lineups
- Enter Match 39 scores
- After the Mile
- Enter Match 39 lineups
- Enter Match 38 scores
- Enter Match 38 lineups
- Reason for Ticket's alternate bike ride route home...
- Enter Match 37 scores
- Enter Match 37 lineups
- http://games.espn.go.com/fba/playerrater
- 9th Supplemental draft
- Enter Match 36 scores
- Enter Match 36 lineups (March 8 start)
- Enter Match 35 scores
- Enter Match 35 lineup
-
▼
March
(25)
16 comments:
Tim Danielson was among an exclusive group of runners who had broken the elusive four-minute barrier. Now he is a runner shackled, charged with killing his ex-wife.
By JERÉ LONGMAN
SAN DIEGO — It was to be a reunion of Southern California’s top high school runners, more than a hundred of them across six decades. National record-setters, state champions, a sprinkling of Olympians. Among them, a private man was going to make a rare public appearance. If Tim Danielson was not the guest of honor, exactly, he was the one everybody wanted to see.
On June 11, 1966, competing at Balboa Stadium, where the San Diego Chargers and the Beatles had performed, Danielson became the second American high school athlete to run a mile under four minutes. It was an achievement so extraordinary that only three prep milers have done it since, running four laps around a track, averaging less than a minute per lap.
Danielson’s stunning time that day was 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. It matched the time that Roger Bannister, an English medical student, had run on May 6, 1954, in becoming the first man to break the physical and psychological barrier that was four minutes.
Until that moment, many outside the track world wondered whether such a feat was possible. Would the heart burst? Bannister’s achievement was widely considered, with the climbing of Mount Everest in 1953, the greatest sporting accomplishments of the mid-20th century.
“I suppose the appeal lies in its very simplicity,” Bannister, who became a neurologist, wrote in his autobiography, “The First Four Minutes.” “It needs no money, no equipment, and in a world of increasingly complex technology, it stands out as a naïve statement about our nature. A man could, with his own two feet, overcome all difficulties to reach a pinnacle upon which he could declare, ‘No one has ever done this before.’”
A decade later, in 1964, Jim Ryun became the first American high school miler to break four minutes. When Danielson followed with his great run in 1966, it was still considered a defining test of human capacity for speed and endurance. He joined one of the sporting world’s most exclusive clubs, running into history at the same speed as Roger Bannister.
While Ryun later set a world record in the mile and won a silver medal in the 1,500 meters, or metric mile, at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Danielson never reached the Summer Games. Nor did he run another mile under four minutes.
By 1971, Danielson had apparently stepped from the track into the ether, vanishing from the public eye. But far from being forgotten, he became one of American track and field’s most enduring mysteries.
Depending on one’s view, he left his career unfulfilled or defiantly refused to have his life’s boundaries set by a triumph, however enormous, that occurred before he turned 19.
In November 2010, Danielson was named one of San Diego’s 50 greatest high school athletes. It took months to reach him and invite him to a reunion of Southern California’s top high school runners. Then, two months before the reunion, he phoned while riding his mountain bike. Sure, he would love to attend.
“He was the guy everyone was so excited about, more than anyone else,” said Ralph Serna, a top high school runner in the 1970s who organized the reunion at a bar in Fullerton, Calif. “I felt fortunate to finally be able to speak to the guy who only seemed to be an urban legend when I grew up. Tim Danielson was the No. 1 distance runner ever to come out of California, the second guy to break four minutes. Everyone put him on this pedestal. No way could anyone get close to him.”
Jim Ryun (1), the first prep miler to break four minutes, on his way to winning the 1966 A.A.U. national championship mile, as pictured in the January 1967 issue of Track & Field News. Danielson, fourth from right, appearing behind Ryun’s left shoulder, finished sixth in 4:03.3.
A shoe designer and track archivist, Serna began corresponding with Danielson.
A shoe designer and track archivist, Serna began corresponding with Danielson. He prepared some mementos for the reunion: a picture of Danielson and other runners on a computer mouse pad, a pint glass bearing his name, a kind of baseball trading card that recorded Danielson’s best marks in high school, illuminating his speed and versatility: 50.2 seconds for 440 yards, 1:53.2 for 880 yards, 3:59.4 for the mile, 8:55.4 for two miles, 20 feet 6 inches for the long jump.
Serna also made a DVD showing Danielson’s victories in the California state mile championship in 1965 and 1966, his face placid, his arms swaying slightly, his sinewy legs carrying him to easy victory. The clarity was unusual. Many races from that era were grainy and filmed without a zoom lens. Danielson graciously thanked Serna.
“I feel like I should pay you for your work,” Danielson wrote in an e-mail on May 5, 2011. “It doesn’t seem fair that this is all free.”
Later that May, the correspondence stopped. Danielson must have been busy at work, Serna figured. No big deal. Danielson had the details about the reunion. Everyone would be excited to see him in July.
Then, three weeks before the reunion, Serna received a cascade of e-mails from friends.
A Sorry Predicament’
¶Tim Danielson sat slumped on the toilet in a white T-shirt and underwear. He was breathing but apparently unconscious, unresponsive to the voices of sheriff’s deputies. In an adjacent bedroom, a generator ran loudly. The smell of gasoline was potent. Ming Qi, a former wife of Danielson’s, lay dead on the bed. A pump-action shotgun lay beside her. A .22-caliber rifle was nearby. Authorities said she was shot six times.
¶By all accounts, Danielson had been gentle, humble, quiet, even-tempered, law abiding. He could not remember getting so much as a parking ticket. But his life had grown complicated, according to court records and interviews with his lawyer, friends, co-workers, neighbors and relatives.
¶They described Danielson, now 65, as professionally dutiful and socially awkward, a steady and reliable engineer, but also a shy man who struggled with alcohol and relationships, married three times and had a long-term companionship and a son with a woman who had been his pen pal when she was in prison.
¶
¶In the late spring of 2011, Danielson grew despondent as his personal life became tangled. He had resumed drinking after 12 or 13 years of sobriety and had begun seeing a psychologist, his lawyer said. His family grew concerned about his state of mind.
¶On the night of June 12, 2011, Danielson was accused of killing Qi, his third wife, who was 48. She was a native of China whom Danielson had met online. They were divorced but were living together at his gabled home in Lakeside, Calif., northeast of San Diego.
¶Danielson also tried to asphyxiate himself with carbon monoxide fumes, according to court testimony, upset because he believed Qi was seeing another man. He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. If convicted, he faces 50 years to life in prison. His trial is set for mid-June, a time of year that has signified the best moments in his life, and the worst.
¶“Everyone was stunned,” said Serna, who organized the 2011 reunion. It went on as scheduled, but “there was a gray cloud over the event,” he noted. “It was an awkward feeling.”
¶For more than a year and a half, Danielson has awaited trial without bail in the San Diego County jail. At a recent hearing, he appeared in jail blues and sandals, his hands cuffed and bound to his waist, the chains that restricted him plinking in a nearly empty courtroom in El Cajon, Calif. His hair was white and thinning, his face and body gone soft and round from a lack of exercise.
¶“I’m in a sorry predicament that is still a major nightmare,” Danielson wrote on June 25, 2012, to Bob Messina, a former college teammate at San Diego State who read the letter to a reporter. “Right now the outcome is in limbo. I’m not sure when it will end or how it will end. One thing is certain is that I had a serious mental breakdown. It was not part of or who I am. I’m still in shock after a year.”
¶He could not discuss the case, Danielson wrote, but added, “Some things have surfaced which help explain my meltdown.”
¶He worked for the same aviation company in El Cajon for 40 years, Danielson wrote. He had become the chief scientist of chemical milling technology for GKN Aerospace Chem-Tronics, which manufactures parts and casings for jet engines. He had two sons, Brian, who was then 44, and a younger son who was 17. Danielson wrote that they were close despite their age difference.
The memorial announcement for Ming Qi, who was shot to death on June 12, 2011. Danielson had met Qi, a native of China, online. They were divorced but living together when she was killed.
¶He was not ready for retirement and had planned to work at least two more years. (A job evaluation called him “an excellent employee” who was known to be “very reclusive” but was “liked by everyone,” was devoted to his family and had raised his youngest son by himself, “never lost his temper” and was “willing to help anybody in need.”)
¶“I had a good life before this terrible thing happened,” Danielson wrote. “No one could have ever guessed this outcome, me the most.”
¶Until four years earlier, Danielson wrote, he still ran “off and on.” But his races were a long way from Balboa Stadium. In his last five-kilometer run, he finished first in his age group in a community race. Shortly after, he tore a tendon in his left foot that led to the collapse of his arch. He had to stop running, but he still rode his mountain bike 50 miles a week “until the tragedy.”
¶
¶Little exercise was permitted in the San Diego County jail, Danielson wrote. Once he could run a mile in four minutes. Now he was permitted only to walk around the tables in the jail cafeteria, 40 laps to the mile.
¶“I haven’t seen the sun in the past year, which just adds to the depression,” Danielson wrote. “As of now, I’m not certain what the outcome will be. It is not knowing that makes it so much more difficult. The time range I’m faced with is huge. At my age, even a somewhat short sentence might mean forever. I would not look forward to that.”
¶He had lost everything he owned — his house, cars, motor home, all-terrain vehicles, tools, even his clothes. The only things he still had were the support of his family and a retirement account, he wrote, “but I’m just not sure when or if I’ll be out.”
¶
The Rise and the Fade
Facebook
Twitter
Google
E-Mail
Print
The second of four brothers, Danielson was born to parents who square-danced in the garage and joked that there was never a time without a broken lamp in the house in Chula Vista, just south of San Diego. The family vacationed at national parks, visited the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle and took excursions to Mexico, where Tim always seemed to coax fish onto his line. It was evidence of a competitive streak, relatives said, that included bowling and Scrabble games with his mother and, especially, varsity sports.
At Chula Vista High School, Danielson played offensive and defensive end on the football team as a sophomore and junior. He also kicked and punted and said through his lawyer that he seldom left the field. He was an accomplished wrestler. Baseball might have been his best sport, he said, until he broke his clavicle, which interfered with his throwing.
In 1965, Danielson became the California state champion in the mile. For his senior year in 1965-66, he decided to put his full concentration into running. “Besides,” he told The San Diego Union, “I had to block some of those big guys in football and it got a little rough.”
His workouts would become known for their volume and ferocity. In high school, he trained twice a day, sometimes even three times. He recalled his weekly speed work during the track season: Monday, eight repeats of 440 yards; Tuesday, 20x220 yards (in 24 seconds); Wednesday, 40x110 yards; Thursday, a warm-up and strides; Friday, meet day; Saturday and Sunday, a 15-mile run.
At home, Danielson sprinted between telephone poles in the neighborhood. He lifted weights and practiced visualization, imagining his races before they happened. In the summers, at a Y.M.C.A. camp where he worked as a dishwasher in the mountains east of San Diego, he said he ran five miles a day and did uphill sprints in construction boots at an altitude of 4,000 feet.
Decades later, he would give this advice to a neighbor’s son, who was a high school runner: “Train harder than what the coach said.”
In the winter of his senior year, Danielson sustained a compression fracture in his back in a toboggan accident. The accident was noted in Track & Field News. A doctor told him not to run for six weeks, according to his older brother Mike, an anesthesiologist. But within a week or two, Tim was back in training, wearing a brace from his chest to his hips.
He ran with an erect style that made him seem taller than 5 feet 9 inches, had quick acceleration, was quietly confident and possessed a barrel chest and muscularity at 145 pounds that did not fit the stereotype of the lean miler.
“He was very strong and tough, a complete athlete,” said Bob Larsen, a longtime track coach, formerly at U.C.L.A., who trains Meb Keflezighi, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist in the marathon. “There was a strength that you didn’t see with the other guys. It’s still hard to believe Tim was a sub-four-minute miler. He wasn’t that tall, lanky Jim Ryun-type of distance runner.”
In 1966, Danielson won another California state mile title, in 4:07. He had run 4:06.2 in a sectional race also limited to high school athletes. But he would need a field of older, elite runners to push him past the four-minute barrier. On film of his ’66 state mile title, as people congratulated him, Danielson seemed to Serna, the archivist, like “a guy who had eaten all day and was still hungry. He needed more.”
On June 11, 1966, Danielson found his race, a seven-man field in the San Diego Invitational. The headliner was Jim Grelle of the United States, who had finished eighth in the metric mile at the 1960 Rome Olympics and had run a sub-four-minute mile 19 times. A day before the race, Danielson went to the beach and jogged through the surf to ease the soreness in his right Achilles’ tendon.
The track at Balboa Stadium was rubberized asphalt, one of the early all-weather running surfaces, not cinders as Bannister had run on. Warming up in the infield, Danielson seemed to the other high schooler in the race, Rick Riley, of Spokane, Wash., to be a classic Californian: blonde, tan, extremely fit.
“It was a pretty astounding performance,” Riley, then the national prep record-holder at two miles, said of Danielson. “He had impeccable form — great arm carriage, high knee lift. Nothing about him didn’t say that this guy was a great runner. He had great quickness. And he was very confident. A lot of times, younger guys get overwhelmed. He wasn’t. It was like he belonged there.”
The race strategy was to let Grelle go and to stay with the pack, a plan that unfolded as designed. The first four runners crossed the finish under four minutes. Danielson was among them, in fourth place at 3:59.4, a personal best by nearly seven seconds. Graduation day at Chula Vista High had not arrived, yet he was the 16th fastest miler in the world. Offers came to run on the European circuit, and Danielson brought home coins from the countries he visited.
“I just can’t believe it,” Danielson told The San Diego Union after his record race. “It all seems like a dream.”
In the fall of 1966, he left for Brigham Young, a track power that offered what Danielson considered a strategic advantage. The university was located in Provo, Utah, altitude 4,500 feet at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains. There he could train at even higher elevations for the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, to be held at 7,500 feet.
“I felt like he could be the next great star, taking Jim Ryun’s place,” said Sherald James, who coached B.Y.U.’s distance runners at the time.
But the altitude experiment did not work. Danielson left after a year and returned to San Diego. He loved the mountains but was not prepared for the snow. He also grew homesick and missed his girlfriend, James said. And, perhaps inevitably, coach and star pupil had somewhat different ideas about training, disagreeing on the balance of endurance work and speed work, one urging restraint, the other seeking release.
Danielson would insist on running 20 intervals of 440 yards, each in less than 60 seconds, at altitude, James said, or would augment a 10-mile run with seven or eight fast quarters on the track.
“I really liked Tim, thought he was a fine young man,” James said. “He was highly motivated. But great runners have the ability to destroy themselves. They won’t take halfway and be satisfied.”
Danielson, center, with two other standout milers from the San Diego area, Jim Adkins, left, and Dave Funderbirk. Danielson was considered shorter and stronger than the stereotypically lean distance runner.
After leaving B.Y.U., Danielson entered one of the most celebrated miles ever run in the United States as Ryun set a world record of 3:51.1 on June 23, 1967, in Bakersfield, Calif. For half a mile, Danielson hung close in second place, but his boldness led to fatigue and Ryun pulled away.
“He looked like a deer out there,” Danielson said recently through his lawyer.
The first seven runners broke four minutes. Danielson drifted into eighth place, just behind Marty Liquori, who that day became the third high school runner to break four minutes in 3:59.8. Danielson ran one of his fastest times — 4:00.6 — yet a door seemed to close.
He was not to be the next great American miler.
“I lost track of Tim after that,” Ryun said.
On Feb. 12, 1968, Danielson ran to his first major elite victory in an indoor mile in Los Angeles. But he was distracted. Three days earlier, he had married Carolyn Mooers, whom he had met at the Y.M.C.A. camp where he worked in high school. Four months after the wedding, their son Brian was born.
With the Mexico City Olympics only months away, Danielson now had the responsibilities of being a husband, a father, a student and an athlete. Even if he had quit school, the rules of amateurism in that era would not have allowed him to be paid for his running.
“In those days, if anyone married they were finished,” Liquori said.
For the 1968 Olympics, Danielson attempted to qualify at 5,000 meters, or 3.1 miles. But he never reached the qualifying standard of 13:50. The birth of his eldest son on June 4 was a difficult one, he said, and three days later he “didn’t have it” as he ran poorly in a 5,000-meter race in Compton, Calif.
Two weeks after that, Danielson could finish no higher than ninth at the national A.A.U. championships in 14:23.2. A last-chance qualifying attempt for the Olympic trials ended on Aug. 10, 1968, at the Mt. San Antonio College Relays in California. Track & Field News noted that for a list of athletes including Danielson, “failure to appear or a poor performance marked the end of the trail.”
In 1969, competing for San Diego State, Danielson was considered a favorite with Ryun and Liquori to win the N.C.A.A. outdoor mile championship. But he did not reach the final. He was taking challenging science courses, raising a son, managing an apartment building. His eligibility expired and his scholarship money ran out. Short of graduation, Danielson left the university in 1971 to begin working as a chemical engineer.
“He was married; there was another dimension in his life,” said Tony Sucec, who coached Danielson at San Diego State.
“He ran well. He had a great kick; he could run the last 200 meters of a mile about as fast as he could flat out. But in my mind, he didn’t have the ability to train as hard and consistently as he used to."
Running Toward Trouble
¶If Danielson had any regrets about his running career, he seemed to keep them to himself. But he and his first wife drifted apart, and by 1974 they were divorced. “A lot was because he was so extremely dedicated to his running,” said Mooers, whose name now is Carolyn Enns. “It was so important to him.”
¶Even though the marriage did not last, Enns described Danielson as calm, never violent, quiet without being reclusive, a doting father. “He was always there to be with his son, and very responsible,” she said.
¶At some point after the divorce, Danielson developed a drinking problem, according to his brother, his lawyer and former family members, who described multiple attempts by him to stop, including rehab.
¶“He told me he couldn’t be just a casual drinker,” said Mike Danielson. While he had never seen Tim drink, Mike said, his brother had described himself as a “guy who got off work and got blasted to go to sleep” and “had to finish the bottle.”
¶On May 17, 1986, Danielson married a second time, to a woman named Kathleen Ruff. The marriage lasted only about two and a half years until she filed for divorce and sought a restraining order against Danielson. According to an affidavit filed in the divorce case, Ruff said that she came home from work on Oct. 14, 1988, and that Danielson was “drunk and became physically and verbally abusive.”
¶He threw her against a wall, Ruff said in the affidavit, and later “took all the guns into the garage and made a show of cocking them.” She said she locked herself in a bedroom with her two daughters.
¶Four days later, Ruff said in the affidavit, Danielson began yelling at her and prevented her and her two daughters from leaving the house. Previously, Ruff said, Danielson had put some guns outside the garage door and had brought a handgun inside the house. She said she feared for the safety of herself and her daughters.
¶Danielson denied ever displaying a weapon in a threatening manner. The handgun, he said in an affidavit, had always been in a night stand beside the bed and had been kept unloaded. The gun placed outside the garage was his son’s broken BB gun, he said. He never tried to restrain Ruff from leaving the house, Danielson said, calling her accusations a ploy to attempt to gain possession of the family house.
¶The divorce became final on Sept. 19, 1989. Through her children, Ruff declined to be interviewed. Kim Ruff, a daughter, would not speak about the gun accusations from 1988. She said that Danielson did have issues with alcohol. Yet she also described him as “a very quiet, intelligent man” who continued to run 5 to 10 miles a day at that time.
¶Chris Ruff, a son, called Danielson a “highly functioning alcoholic” and a “pretty good stepfather” who had been “a kind and gentle person to me.”
¶“Our family still cares about Tim,” Chris Ruff said, describing him as “painfully shy, not out of arrogance or insecurity, just shy.”
Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times
The house in Lakeside, Calif., where Tim Danielson and his ex-wife Ming Qi were living. She had begun seeing another man in May 2011, according to a friend, and was preparing to move out. Her body was found at the home early on the morning of June 13, 2011. Sheriff’s deputies found Danielson, apparently unconscious, slumped on a toilet.
¶
¶A high school track coach, Ruff also called Danielson a “cardiovascular monster” who excelled in local community races in the 1980s. It was his understanding, Ruff said, that Danielson ran under an assumed name. “He was extremely private,” Ruff said. “I don’t think it was an ego thing. He didn’t want questions. He didn’t define himself by the four-minute mile.”
¶But his shyness became further isolating as Danielson’s smoking habit increased to two or three packs a day, his brother Mike said. Through the years, Tim also grew resentful toward his father, a disciplinarian, and believed that repeated spankings as a boy had later affected his ability to maintain relationships, his brother said.
¶“I don’t think Tim ever got over that,” Mike Danielson said.
¶A correspondence with a woman who was imprisoned for robbery, according to court records and news accounts, led to a relationship and a second son, who was born in 1994 and is now a high school senior.
¶About a decade later, Danielson met Ming Qi online and traveled to China to meet her and her teenage son, who came with his mother to the United States. Danielson and Qi married in 2006 and divorced in 2008 but continued a complicated relationship that ultimately ended in tragedy.
¶“Maybe they picked him,” Mike Danielson said of the women in Tim’s life. “I don’t know if he approached them. He was a hard person to pull things out of.”
¶He was also strong-willed, as indicated by his track achievements. Eventually, Danielson stopped drinking for a long period, telling his brother about 15 years ago that he had joined Alcoholics Anonymous.
¶In 2003, Danielson appeared at a reunion in San Diego with Ryun, Liquori and Alan Webb, who had joined the sub-four-minute mile club in 2001, setting a national prep record of 3:53.43. Asked by DyeStat, a Web site devoted to high school track and field, why so few had accomplished what he had, Danielson said he thought today’s milers had fewer opportunities to challenge themselves against older athletes. He also suggested they did not train as vigorously and noted that the mile had lost some of its cachet, replaced at many prep meets by the 1,600 meters.
¶Ryun exchanged greetings with Danielson but remembered speaking more to the others. “He was the quiet one in the group,” Ryun said.
¶When Danielson’s former high school coach, Harry Taylor, died in 2009, Mike Danielson recalled being amazed as his brother spoke expansively and eloquently at the funeral in praise of his mentor.
¶
¶“I had no idea he could talk like that,” Mike Danielson said. “He said, ‘I give talks like that at A.A.’ I said, ‘Really?’”
The Killing of Ming Qi
On June 21, 2006, Danielson married Ming Qi, his third wife. She had been a professor in China, neighbors said, describing her son, Huapeng, as a math prodigy who now attends Cal-Berkeley. He declined to be interviewed, saying, “I don’t like to talk about it.”
Qi was described as a charming and outgoing woman who played tennis, took frequent walks and carried a baseball bat in case one of the numerous neighborhood dogs threatened her.
She did some substitute teaching and, in the summer of 2011, was scheduled to soon begin teaching Mandarin in a language immersion program for elementary school students.
“She seemed nice, always polite,” said Peggy Overland-McKay, a neighbor and school district secretary.
Danielson taught Qi how to drive and spoke highly of her son, neighbors and relatives said. But cultural and language issues led to tension in the relationship, they said. Qi did not like to go camping and ride all-terrain vehicles in the desert east of San Diego, a weekend passion of Danielson’s, said Anh Nguyen, a neighbor who grew close to Qi.
Qi also said that some members of Danielson’s family believed she was using him to stay in the country, according to Nguyen. Sometimes when the couple argued, Qi told Nguyen, Danielson would say, “I’ll divorce you and you’ll have to go back to China.”
Danielson and Qi separated on June 23, 2008, two years and two days after their wedding. Danielson filed for divorce a day later. Because she had lived in the United States while married for two years, Qi was eligible to become a permanent resident. Divorce records indicate that Danielson was ordered to repay $25,000 that Qi had deposited in his bank account at the beginning of the marriage.
The marriage was not arranged but was entered into with affectionate expectation, and the date of the separation did not appear significant, Danielson’s relatives and lawyer said. Within several months of the divorce, Qi had moved back in with Danielson, living in a separate bedroom, said Nguyen, the neighbor.
Paul Pfingst, Danielson’s lawyer and a former district attorney in San Diego, said, “He always loved her.”
When Qi and Danielson reconciled, Danielson was ill or injured or had undergone minor surgery, said Nguyen, the neighbor. Qi explained that Danielson had called and said he missed her and needed assistance. She was living in an apartment and felt safer and more financially secure living in a home with her former husband. When things were going well, Qi told Nguyen, she and her ex-husband became romantically involved. When they argued, he wanted her to pay rent.
Through 2011, Overland-McKay, the neighbor, said that Danielson seemed to spend less time sitting in his garage, where he would smoke, drink coffee and wave to neighbors as they walked by. He appeared to be losing weight and growing thinner in the face.
That spring, a star runner from the 1990s named Milena Glusac met Danielson at a ceremony to honor San Diego’s greatest high school athletes. He could not have been friendlier in congratulating her, Glusac said, but he also appeared troubled.
“He seemed very tired, his shoulders were rounded, his voice was sunken,” Glusac said. “I almost felt like I had to strain to listen to him.”
In May 2011, Qi began seeing another man, whom she had met online, Nguyen said she later learned. Around this time, Qi told Nguyen that Danielson could become angry “just like that” and that when he started drinking “he drinks a lot.”
¶
¶A month or two before the shooting, Danielson said something — it is not clear what — that led relatives to believe he might harm himself. Mike Danielson said that relatives spoke to Tim on the beach in Coronado, Calif., where he liked to fish. They recommended he seek professional help.
¶“We all thought he was super depressed,” Mike Danielson said. “You couldn’t get him to smile. He was the lowest I’ve ever seen him.”
¶During this stressful period, Danielson “fell off the wagon,” became despondent and began seeing a psychologist, said Pfingst, his lawyer. “He was descending, and he made attempts to reach out for help,” Pfingst said.
¶About two weeks before the shooting, Qi told Nguyen that Danielson was growing suspicious about her boyfriend. According to Nguyen, Qi said that her personal life was none of Danielson’s business.
¶“I’m just his roommate,” Qi said, according to Nguyen. “I’m paying rent. I can do whatever I want.”
Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times
Danielson, right, in court last month with his lawyer, Paul Pfingst. Of the murder charge, Pfingst said, “I think there will be issues argued about his mental state at the time for which he is not legally responsible.”
Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times
Peggy Overland-McKay, a neighbor and friend of Danielson’s, with her dogs Petey (on the floor) and Oreo. Overland-McKay, who has continued to correspond with Danielson, said Oreo kept returning to his house to receive treats from him for months after the killing.
¶Later, in court, Pfingst would suggest that Danielson felt humiliated as Qi began “throwing her affair in his face.”
¶Nguyen, an electronics engineer, said she suggested that Qi move out of Danielson’s house, telling her friend that Danielson had treated her nicely in bringing her to the United States and establishing her son in school. Make peace with him, Nguyen said she told Qi. Danielson deserved that much respect.
¶About 10 days before the shooting, Qi began to pack some things, which made Danielson angry, according to Nguyen. A few days later, he put some of Qi’s belongings in storage and told her to leave. He seemed conflicted, Qi told Nguyen.
¶“She couldn’t understand what he wanted,” Nguyen said.
¶On June 11, 2011 — the 45th anniversary of Danielson’s epic run — his name would appear in stories about Lukas Verzbicas, who that day became the fifth prep miler to break four minutes in a race, in New York. Little more than a day later, the headlines would turn tragic.
¶About 7:45 p.m. on June 12, Nguyen testified in court, she and Qi went for a walk in their Lakeside neighborhood for about an hour. Qi wanted to move in with her temporarily that night, but Nguyen’s spare bedroom was not yet ready. It would be available at 9 the next morning.
¶“Can I do it earlier?” Qi asked.
¶“O.K., just call me when you’re ready,” Nguyen said.
¶“O.K.,” Qi replied, “I’m going to go and tell Tim I’m going to move out.”
¶At 4:45 a.m. on June 13, San Diego County sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the Danielson home. A radio call to a patrol car said a person had died in the house and someone else was attempting to take his own life. Connie Danielson, a sister-in-law of Tim’s, had phoned the authorities. She had just viewed an alarming e-mail that had been sent sometime after 9 the previous evening.
¶“I killed Ming,” Danielson wrote, according to a summary of the e-mail given by a homicide detective in court testimony. “I’m going to I shot Ming. I think she’s dead. We have I put a generator in the house, I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to go to her, lay down with her and die as well. I’m sorry. If you call 911 you should call 911, but be careful of carbon monoxide.”
¶
¶
¶When deputies entered the house, they noticed blood in the stairwell and went to the second floor, finding a locked door to the master bedroom. The door was kicked in. Qi lay on the bed, apparently dead, a small amount of blood on her nose and lips. A shotgun was next to her in the bed. Another gun, a .22-caliber rifle, eventually determined to be the one that shot her, was found behind a door.
¶A generator hummed in the bedroom. Exhaust fumes were powerful. Danielson sat on the toilet in an adjacent bathroom, tilted to his right. Detectives gave him commands, but he did not respond. They could not see Danielson’s hands to tell whether he was armed. So he was Tasered twice, then handcuffed.
¶He was taken to a hospital, administered drugs, placed in a hyperbaric chamber and given oxygen therapy. He then spoke with a homicide detective. According to court testimony by the detective, Qi left home on Friday that weekend and returned Sunday. As she took a walk with Nguyen, her neighbor, that Sunday evening, Danielson went through Qi’s laundry. He found a pair of men’s pajama bottoms and became upset. He then went upstairs to get his .22 rifle.
¶He returned to the living room and dining room area, held the rifle at his hip and shot Qi in the torso and buttocks, according to the detective’s testimony. Qi screamed, “No!” and tried to dive out of the way. Danielson shot her again, then moved closer. He fired a final shot into the back of Qi’s head “to make sure that she was dead” and “so she wouldn’t suffer.”
¶He attempted to clean up some blood, carried Qi upstairs, filled a generator with gasoline and tried to asphyxiate himself, the detective testified.
¶Qi was “moving on,” the detective testified, and Danielson said he “couldn’t cope with it.”
¶At a court hearing five months after the shooting, Pfingst, the lawyer, suggested that Danielson was confused that June day in 2011, that he “didn’t know what was going on” and thought “something was seriously wrong with his brain” and wondered if he actually killed Qi or whether it was “all a dream.”
¶Mike Danielson said in an interview that Tim had undergone shoulder surgery early in 2011 and later had been prescribed the antismoking medication Chantix. He wondered whether pharmacological kerosene had stoked the fire in his brother’s head and helped explain his unraveling.
¶More than 2,700 lawsuits, now consolidated, were filed against Pfizer, the manufacturer of Chantix, alleging that the drug caused suicidal thoughts, aggressive and erratic behavior, depression and loss of memory. In recent months, Pfizer has settled two high-profile test cases while maintaining that the drug was safe to use.
¶Raising a Chantix argument in the Danielson case would require delicate legal maneuvering. California abolished the defense of diminished capacity after the so-called Twinkie defense was used to explain the 1978 shooting deaths of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and a city supervisor named Harvey Milk.
¶Pfingst would not discuss his defense strategy for Danielson, except to say, “I think there will be issues argued about his mental state at the time for which he is not legally responsible.”
¶
¶
¶The shooting was not premeditated murder but was an act of manslaughter that occurred during a quarrel or in the heat of passion, Pfingst is expected to argue. Such a defense, if successful, could reduce Danielson’s potential sentence to 6 to 21 years, which might permit him to regain his freedom at some point.
¶“Most of us like to think that if we’ve led a good life and we’ve raised our families being good in our communities, haven’t violated any laws, showed up at work every day, paid our taxes and raised our kids and took them to Little League and behaved kindly to people around us, that it will have some substance to it,” Pfingst said. “That it will not go unnoticed.”
¶For months after the shooting, a neighborhood dog named Oreo kept returning to Danielson’s house, waiting for him to come home from work. He had fed treats to the dog, a Lhasa apso, and even let Oreo take naps on the couch.
¶
“I don’t think I ever saw him lose his temper or talk loud,” Overland-McKay, the neighbor and Oreo’s owner, said of Danielson. “He was a really nice guy. I think he snapped. He said, ‘I just don’t understand what happened; maybe someday I will.’”
WTF?
Post a Comment