Friday marks arguably the biggest news day Cupertino residents have ever experienced. It started with an early morning shooting at the Lehigh Southwest Cement and Quarry and ended with the announcement of Steve Jobs’ death.
Early that morning, Shareef Allman opened fire on his co-workers and supervisors during a safety meeting leaving three dead, and six more injured. He fled, dumped his car in a parking lot at Homestead and Wolfe roads, attempted to carjack a car at nearby Hewlett-Packard parking lot and shot a woman there.
For the better part of that day Allman was hiding in a Sunnyvale neighborhood across from HP with armed SWAT teams scouring the streets looking for him.
Later that day more breaking news would shock Cupertino: Steve Jobs was dead. Hordes of mourners and admirers flocked to One Infinite Loop where piles of flowers, cards, apples and other offerings were left in his honor.
The next day while people were still pouring onto Apple headquarters' grounds to pay their respects, Allman appeared from behind a car parked in a driveway of the same neighborhood he had holed up in overnight.
Officers saw his gun and fired, but utlimately he died from his own gunshot wound.
Oct. 5 will be remembered by some in the world as the day Steve Jobs died; the day Apple changed forever. But the residents of Cupertino surely have a deeper connection to the hometown boy who graduated from Homestead High School and placed the headquarters and giant new campus in their city—and they will surely remember the fear of an armed shooter roaming their streets early in the morning.
Share your memories of that day here. How do you remember Oct. 5, 2011?
