Santa Monica suspect was 23-year-old ex-student

Updated 10:55 p.m. ET

LOS ANGELES Police identified the suspect in the Santa Monica shooting that killed five others as a 23-year-old who would have turned 24 on Saturday.

Authorities announced Sunday that the suspect, John Zawahri, and his brother were enrolled at Santa Monica College as early as 2010. Zawahri, who was first identified late Saturday, was killed by police during the gunfight. The shooting began at his father's house and ended at the college.

Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said the suspected gunman had contact with law enforcement in 2006.

"However, because the individual was a juvenile at the time, I'm not at liberty to discuss circumstances of that contract," she said.

Marcela Franco, 26, died of her injuries at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center Sunday, according to Santa Monica College spokeswoman Tricia Ramos, bringing the victim death toll to five..

Franco had been a passenger in a Ford Explorer driven by her father, campus groundskeeper Carlos Navarro Franco, 68, who also was killed in Friday's attack.

Investigators trying to determine why the gunman planned the shooting spree were focusing on a deadly act of domestic violence that touched off the mayhem.

The heavily armed man's attack against his own family led to the violence in Santa Monica streets, lasting just a matter of minutes until he was shot to death in a chaotic scene at the college library by police.

Investigators were looking at family connections to find a motive because the killer's father and brother were the first victims, an official briefed on the probe who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly told The Associated Press.

The killer was connected to a home that went up in flames after the first shootings, said police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks.

SWAT team officers searched the shooter's mother's Los Angeles apartment and officers interviewed neighbors about the son who lived with her, said Beverly Meadows who lives in the adjoining unit.

Public records show that Meadows' neighbor is Randa Abdou, 54, the ex-wife of Samir Zawahri and former co-owner of the house where the first shooting took place.

Abdou was out of the country visiting relatives and wasn't expected home for another week, Meadows said. It wasn't clear if the son who lived with Abdou was a victim or the suspected gunman.

The elder Zawahri, 55 and of Lebanese descent, brought his family to the neighborhood of small homes and apartment buildings tucked up against Interstate 10 in the mid-1990s, according to property records.

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Not long after arriving on Yorkshire Avenue, the couple went through a difficult divorce and split custody of their two boys, said Thomas O'Rourke, a neighbor.

When the sons got older, one went to live with his mother while the other stayed with the father.

Standing next to the weapons and ammo found at multiple crime scenes, Seabrooks said at a Saturday news conference that the "cowardly murderer" planned the attack and was capable of firing 1,300 rounds.

After neighbors watched in shock as he shot at his father's house and it went up in flames, he opened fire on a woman driving by, wounding her, and then carjacked another woman.

He directed her to drive to the college, ordering her stop along the way to shoot at a city bus and people on the street. Several people were injured, including Debra Fine.

Fine was shot four times and is recovering. She told CBS News correspondent Carter Evans she first thought the gunman was related to White House security, because President Obama was in town. She realized something was amiss in the way he held his gun, and described him as being in "execute mode."

"And then I saw his eyes. I saw him point. And then I knew. Then I knew he was really going to shoot and when I heard the explosion an the glass flying. I knew it was bullet," she told Evans.

On campus, he opened fire on a Ford Explorer driven by Navarro Franco, who plowed through a brick wall into a faculty parking lot.

Joe Orcutt heard gunshots and went to see what happened in the parking lot. He said he saw the Explorer in the brick wall and was looking for the shooter when, suddenly, there he was 30 feet away firing at people like it was target practice.

The gunman then moved on foot across campus, firing away. Students were seen leaping out windows of a classroom building and running for their lives. Others locked themselves behind doors or bolted out of emergency exits.

At some point, he dropped an Adidas duffel bag loaded with ammunition magazines, boxes of bullets and a .44 revolver. Police also found a small cache of ammunition in a room in the burned-out house.

Trena Johnson, who works in the dean's office, heard gunshots and looked out the window and saw a man shoot a woman in the head outside the library.

Surveillance photos showed the gunman in black strolling past a cart of books into the library with an assault-style rifle by his side.

The shooter fired at least 70 rounds in the library. Miraculously, no one was injured until two Santa Monica police officers and a campus cop arrived and took out the shooter.