Los Angeles Times

Woman attacked months ago by California gunman 'knew this was going to end bad'

LOS ANGELES - She was 500 miles away when a wild-eyed gunman killed her boyfriend, his mother and three other people in a dusty mountain hamlet in Northern California.

Now, just two weeks after Kevin Janson Neal's bloody rampage ended in a hail of police gunfire, Hailey Poland said she can't help feeling that she should have been with the victims of Rancho Tehama.

"I just wish I could've been there for them," Poland said from her parents' home in Lancaster. "Kevin's dead, he got the easy way out. The world is rid of one less psychopath with a gun targeting innocent people."

Poland knew the killer all too well. She once lived next

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