Friends plead for Cupertino cement plant shooter to surrender

[The Northerner]

The Shareef Allman they know would try to stop violence, not deal it out with an assault rifle in a workplace massacre.

Sunny and kind, his tattooed boxer's biceps as big as his personality, Allman would help people when they had trouble at work, friends said on Wednesday. He was the one who stopped gang fights. And he was the one on his cable show, "Real 2 Real," interviewing Jesse Jackson about hope and local street walkers about salvation.

As law enforcement launched one of the largest manhunts in South Bay history, ministers and community activists who knew him tried to shake off their tearful disbelief to urge Allman to surrender peacefully.

Absurdly to them, this 47-year-old single father, who wrote a book about overcoming domestic violence, was now the prime suspect in an early morning mass shooting that began at Lehigh Hanson's Permanente Cement Plant in Cupertino and left three dead and seven wounded.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_19050640