At midnight on Christmas Eve, a distraught man dressed as Santa Claus interrupted a holiday party hosted by his ex-wife’s parents with a hail of bullets that left at least six attendees dead and several children fighting for their lives in the hospital.

Today, the Los Angeles Police have identified the gunman as Bruce Pardo, 45, who was found several hours later in his Sylmar home dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The Associated Press recaps the harrowing events of that night:

Pardo had knocked on the door of the home in a quiet residential neighborhood in Covina, 23 miles (37 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, just before midnight on Christmas Eve, police lieutenant Pat Buchanan said.

An eight-year-old girl who answered the door was shot in the face but survived before Pardo stormed into the home and began spraying revelers with bullets with a semi-automatic handgun.

 

After partygoers fled the scene, Pardo torched the house with a bizarre home-made incendiary device before making his getaway.

The investigation is currently on-going, and the police hope to find clues in Pardo’s home that can shed light on what drove him to murder.

What they will undoubtedly find, however, is that pure, unadulterated insanity is what led Pardo to kill.

Why don’t these crazies ever just kill themselves without taking innocent lives first?