Prosecutors said the shooter was in love with the victim’s fiancée, acted out of jealousy
A Filipino-American man was shot and killed last week by a San Francisco International Airport (SFO) employee who was reportedly in love with the victim’s fiancée, who also worked at SFO.
Mark Mangaccat, 31, was picking up his fiancée, Thandel Seinn, from her job at SFO on Wednesday, April 25, when Seinn’s coworker, 31-year-old Kevin Prasad — who was allegedly in love with her — followed the couple on their way home in Daly City.
Twenty-five-year-old Donovan Rivera drove the car that Prasad was following the couple in.
As Mangaccat was backing into their garage, reports said that Prasad exited the car, walked up the driveway and fired five to six shots at Mangaccat. Seinn was not shot.
Mangaccat’s mother, who was at the home when the shooting took place, rushed to the garage to find her son with multiple gunshot wounds.
“I saw my son with the blood in his mouth, and I saw a hole and I said, what happened?” said the mother. “So I ran upstairs and called 9-1-1 and came back and tried [CPR] to my son.”
Seinn said that she never saw the shooter at the time of the killing.
“I’m waiting and I’m sad and crying. Heartbroken,” Seinn told reporters. “So I’m crying and I’m thinking, ‘What happened?’ He has no enemies. I don’t have enemies either.”
After the shooting, Prasad reportedly hurried back to the car and Rivera drove them away from the scene. However, investigators were able to identify and arrest them the next day, officials said.
Seinn said that she saw Prasad as a friend who knew that she and Mangaccat had been in a serious relationship for years.
According to prosecutors, Prasad had been trying to start a romantic relationship with Seinn and wanted her to leave Mangaccat, but Seinn didn’t take Prasad’s requests seriously and rejected his advances.
“He just tell me, ‘Don’t go’ and ‘I want to be with you,’” said Seinn, “He would just say something like a friendly joke.”
Officials have defined the motive as an act of jealousy toward the victim.
“The working proposition for the motive is, “If I kill him and get him out of the way, then I could be there to start the relationship with the grieving widow,” San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said, as quoted by ABC7. “That’s pretty bizarre.”
The couple had a 3-year-old daughter and were about to move the family to Las Vegas together before Mangaccat’s untimely death. Wagstaffe said that last Wednesday was Seinn’s last shift at SFO.
“I didn’t want to lose my husband. He was my soulmate,” Seinn said.
Prasad and Rivera were charged with murder and made their first court appearance on Monday, April 30. They didn’t enter pleas and will return to court on May 8. (Klarize Medenilla/AJPress)
