FAILED LIFE FOR KILLER 'COWARD'

• DIVORCED & LOST JOB BEFORE MASSACRE
• CO-WORKER WORRIED 'HE'D SHOOT US ALL'

By LORENA MONGELLI in Binghamton and TODD VENEZIA and JAMES FANELLI in New York City

Last updated: 2:12 pm
April 5, 2009
Posted: 1:53 am
April 5, 200

The lunatic behind the Binghamton massacre was a pathetic, gun-loving coward who got divorced, lost his job and was driven to depression because he could barely speak English after many years in the United States, officials and people who knew him said yesterday.

His life in the pits, Jiverly Wong, 41, became a regular at Gander Mountain, a sporting goods store, in the six months leading up to the rampage, buying and returning as many as six guns after firing each a few times.

Wong -- who has a daughter in California, according to a coworker -- would get agitated when staffers had trouble with his broken English.

"He would get frustrated," Dave Henderson, who taught a class at the store, told the Press & Sun Bulletin of Binghamton. "There was times I wouldn't even talk to him anymore."

It was not clear if that was where he bought the two guns found on his body after Friday's massacre: 9mm and .45-caliber pistols.

His former co-workers at the ShopVac vacuum-cleaner assembly facility were equally frustrated by his communication problems, and were worried about his gun-loving ways.

On Mondays, when asked about his weekends, Wong routinely replied, "I went to a shooting range," said ex-colleague David Carrico, 18.

"He liked shooting guns. I was worried he would come into work one day, get angry and shoot us all."

It wasn't until five months after his November firing from ShopVac that he finally did snap -- but he directed his rage elsewhere, at the language school from which he essentially flunked out.

Wong on Friday picked up a pair of guns, hoisted a bulging sack of ammunition and marched maniacally into the American Civic Association, killing 13 people before turning the gun on himself. Another four victims remain hospitalized, but are expected to survive.

A clearer picture emerged yesterday of Wong's tale of woe before his grisly end.

The last 10 years of his sorry life included cocaine addiction, a bank-heist plan that never came to fruition, a divorce and lost jobs in New York and California.

Wong -- who at one point changed his last name to Voong, and also sometimes went by the name Linh -- was born in Vietnam to an ethnic Chinese family.

He came to the United States in the early 1990s with his family and became a naturalized citizen.

Wong quickly wound up in trouble, as court records in Los Angeles show that he was charged with forgery in 1992. It's not clear what became of the case. His family finally settled in Binghamton.

He got a gun permit in the mid-1990s.

New York officials investigated him in 1999 after an informant said that he was planning to rob a bank and had a "crack or cocaine" habit, Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski said. Nothing came of the allegations.

A couple of years later, Wong left for California, where he got a job driving a delivery truck for Kikka Sushi and lived in a cheap Inglewood motel. At the fleabag pay-by-the-month joint -- near the airport with bars on the windows -- all he had in his room was a bed and a 52-inch TV, fellow tenant Eric Sherman told The Post.

"All he would do is sit inside his apartment and chain-smoke," he said. "He didn't talk much and I just thought he didn't talk because he didn't really speak English."

Los Angeles court records also show that Wong was married. He was divorced in July 2005.

That was quickly followed by his abrupt departure from Kikka Sushi -- and the West Coast altogether.

Wong complained he was disgruntled at the company, where he made $500 per week.

Back in Binghamton, Wong was able to hold down a steady job at ShopVac until he was laid off, but was again upset over his low pay.

"I work so hard, but they only pay me $8 an hour," he complained to colleague Donald Ackley.

He was also tormented by some coworkers and sat alone in the lunchroom.

"Sometimes they picked on him a little bit," he said. "They would say, 'It's wrong, it's Wong, it's wrong, it's Wong.' "

Depressed and angry, he tried to better himself in the area where he was most vulnerable: his lack of English skills. He enrolled in an intermediate-level class at the association.

But once again he failed by hardly bothering to show up.

"His attendance was so erratic, he was dropped," said Elisabeth Hayes, his English teacher, who was out on vacation on the day of the massacre. Her substitute, Roberta King, 72, wound up dead.

"This was a nasty act of irrationality. Why did he have to do that?" Hayes asked. "We could have been there for him if he needed support. The class was kind to him.

"It's a true American nightmare."

In his final months, Wong -- who wore a hearing aid, according to driving records -- was miserable, surviving on $200 in unemployment benefits and living in his parents' gritty home.

By the time he was ready to commit his cold-blooded crime, the only place he found solace was at a gym, a pal said.

"He seemed a little depressed," said Son Quach, a grocery-store owner who had worked out with him at the Court Jester gym in nearby Johnson City.

He also griped about a recent break-up with his girlfriend, but would not elaborate.

Wong was inconsolable and often whined about his "bad luck."

"We picked up that apparently people were making fun of him and he felt that he was being degraded because of his inability to speak English and he was upset about that," Zikuski said.

The police chief said Wong's suicide was his final act of failure.

Police believe Wong planned to go out in a blaze of glory in a gunfight with cops, but got cold feet when he heard sirens and put a bullet between his eyes.

"He must have been a coward," Zikuski said.

"We speculate that when he heard the sirens, he decided to end his own life. He was heavily armed, had a lot of ammunition on him and, thank God, before more lives were lost, that he decided to do that."

Additional reporting by Tori Richards in Los Angeles, Josh Williams and Brad Hamilton in Binghamton and AP

lorena.mongelli@nypost.com