Damian Meins Was An "Amazing Guy"

An employee of the San Bernardino County Department of Environmental Health has been identified as one of the San Bernardino shooting victims. Damian Meins, his daughter confirmed, died in the shooting at the Inland Regional Center that left 14 people dead and 21 injured Wednesday morning. The Press Enterprise reported that Meins, 58, had worked for 28 years in Riverside County before retiring and eventually taking a job in San Bernardino. The program chief of Riverside County's department of environmental health told The PE, "He was an amazing guy, we'll all miss him."

Posts across Facebook on Thursday afternoon painted a picture of a happy, caring man who loved his wife, Trenna, and his two daughters, Tina and Tawnya. Laurie Lee Nusbaum, whose young daughter was taught in after school care by Meins, wrote, "Mr. Meins was such a kind man who always had a smile for everyone and dressed as Santa for our school Christmas pictures."

The Meins family clearly loved education. Trenna, Meins' wife and high school sweetheart, is the principal at Sacred Heart Parish School in Rancho Cucamonga, California, and his daughter Tawnya is a sixth-grade teacher at St. Catherine's, where Meins also taught after school care and physical education. "RIP Damian Meins, you left this world too soon and you will be missed," Nusbaum wrote.

Walter Hackett, one of Meins' Notre Dame High School classmates, told the Associated Press that Meins took the Catholic message of helping others to heart. Meins, he said, was a "good, good guy. ... Funny and smart and tall. A real quick smile, very friendly and outgoing. It's a real hard hit for all of us who knew him," Hackett told the AP.