‘Mentally unstable, up and down’: San Jose shooter’s former girlfriend details sexual abuse

The suspect in the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the San Francisco Bay Area sexually abused a former girlfriend, she said in a new interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.

The newspaper did not name the woman, since she alleged sexual assault by Samuel James Cassidy, whom she says she met on Match.com in 2008 and dated for about six months.

"Two months into their relationship, she said, Cassidy proposed. She declined. That's when she said Cassidy's behavior turned both verbally and physically abusive. She recalled one specific incident where he raped her while he was drunk, but acknowledged that her memory of the relationship had faded over the years," the newspaper reported.

The woman described Cassidy as being emotionally volatile.

"He was mentally unstable, up and down," she said. "Sometimes he was a nice gentleman, sometime(s) he'd get really angry about some small tiny thing."

"But he got a temper, I know he got a hot temper," she said. "Really hot."

His ex-wife, Cecilia Nelms, made similar claims in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News.

"He had two sides," Nelms told the newspaper on Wednesday. "When he was in a good mood, he was a great guy. When he was mad, he was mad."