Gunman shoots two at Gold Crust Bakery, then takes own life.
By Michael Lee Pope
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Just as the first snowflakes were falling in the Blizzard of 2009, Alexandria emergency responders rushed to scene of a double shooting in Del Ray. The crime scene was at the Gold Crust Bakery, a popular Del Ray establishment at the top of the hill leading to Potomac Yard.
Bakery supervisor Jose Russo, 50, entered the building with a revolver and confronted one of his own employees. Witnesses told police that the two had dated a few times, but she was trying to move on. Apparently Russo became enraged by her rejections.
"She didn’t want to have anything to do with him," said Tommy Durkin, the city’s lead homicide detective. "He was jealous and controlling."
Witnesses told police that the Russo had been spotted in a secluded part of the upstairs that night with two packers who work in the basement of the bakery — the woman he had once dated and a 19-year old immigrant from Togo named Kossi Djossou. That’s when the shooting began. The teenager was dead by the time police arrived, but the woman was able to identify Russo as the shooter before being taken to the hospital, where she remains in stable condition.
"It was a chaotic scene," said police spokesman Jody Donaldson. "There were 40 or 50 witnesses to interview but none of the parking spaces had been cleared by the snow plows."
Russo had already fled the scene by the time cops arrived, but detectives were able to track him down about five hours later at his West End apartment. When Russo saw officers moving in, he ran around a corner and shot himself in the upper body —killing himself rather than facing arrest.
"He chose to go out like that," said Durkin.
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