On April 25, 1997, 29-year-old Michael Trinidad, an Office Depot deliveryman, was shot dead during a violent attack at Answers, a computer training business at 856 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Manhattan Beach, California. The assailant, 47-year-old David Arisman, had entered the business claiming to ask about real estate listings, then produced a firearm, forced a 26-year-old female employee into a back room, restrained and sexually assaulted her.

When Trinidad and a colleague, Richard Moriel, arrived to deliver furniture, Arisman confronted them, bound both men and tried to choke them. Trinidad was shot in the heart and died; Moriel survived. The female victim freed herself, fought Arisman and alerted a parking officer. Arisman fled but was arrested shortly afterward, later tried and convicted of murder and rape and sentenced to death on January 15, 1999; he died in prison hospice care on September 5, 2009, at age 61.