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.