Officer-involved homicides tend to be black-and-white affairs. Police offer one view of a death, usually a snapshot of a few minutes. Friends and family offer a movie view of a life. People remember mostly the good of dead friends and family, but it’s the police version that usually gets told by the media.
David Krambs was 33 years old. He was about 5-feet-10 inches, about 195 pounds. Light complexion, short, brown hair, brown eyes, no glasses. He lived down the street from Reno High in a little gray corner house at 1401 Elizabeth St. He used to program for IGT, but he was unemployed in February of last year.
His friend, Konrad Reichenberger, the soft-spoken, catty-corner neighbor across Hunter Lake Drive, called 9-1-1 because he was afraid for Krambs’ girlfriend, Laibing Rhodes. He still feels guilty about the call, but he doesn’t know what else he could have done. Rhodes had come over complaining about Krambs. Her belongings were in the car for a final departure, but she went back in the house. Reichenberger said she’d been living at a women’s shelter, and she told him Krambs was drunk and punching her, strangling her. Reichenberger still can’t understand why she went back in the house.
Rhodes lives in San Jose now and uses a different last name on her Facebook page. In her thick accent, she said she’s not over what happened—she sees a therapist still—but she’s reticent to talk because Krambs’ parents might read it, and they’ve suffered enough.
The way Reichenberger tells it, his video-game buddy was the nicest guy when he was sober—which was most of the time that Reichenberger knew him—but he was a “demon” when he was drinking: boastful, mean, gun-toting, angry, violent. He had lots of guns, at least an AR15 and a couple of handguns, but was sloppy with them when he drank.
One time when he was drunk, Krambs broke Reichenberger’s door down, and later, threatened to kill him, his dog, and anyone else who was in the home. The reason: He wanted Reichenberger to play Call of Duty. About that time, Krambs’ mom, Pam Cardoza, told police he was suicidal, bipolar and off his meds. Krambs offered to pay Reichenberger for the damage a few weeks later when he sobered up.
Krambs’ college roommate, Marko Rodriguez, from University of California, San Diego remembers the good David Krambs. He now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico: “If you ever met Dave, you would immediately realize that he was ridiculously intelligent—a very logical, almost Asperger-type mind. One of his greatest talents was his guitar skills. He played guitar exactly like David Gilmour of Pink Floyd: a crisp, controlled sound—never a note out of place. He was very school oriented and got excellent grades. I credit Dave as the one who taught me how to program in Java, and it is to this day the language I use every day in my career.”
He said Krambs rarely drank but that he would get all aggressive and buffoonish when he did. Once, another roommate walked into his room at like 9 a.m., and Krambs was pounding beers. The other roommate said, “Breakfast of champions, eh?” and Krambs punched the wall, breaking his hand.
“He wore that cast for a long, long time,” said Rodriguez.
When the police arrived around 6 p.m. on the evening Feb. 23, 2013, they showed up in force. They’d been to the house before, and they knew Krambs had guns. One sniper took to a nearby roof, while a phalanx approached the house using a Citifare bus for cover. They announced their presence loudly. Krambs knew they were there, and when they broke the door down, he was there to meet them with the AR15.
While witness statements vary, at least four shots rang out, all from the Reno Police officers’ guns, but one was all it took, and Krambs lay dead on the floor with a bullet in his spine until the Mountain View Mortuary arrived and picked him up 11 hours later.