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POLICE CHIEF: BINGHAMTON GUNMAN WORE BODY ARMOR

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 today.

Jiverly Wong’s life was on the rocks when he picked up a pair of guns, hoisted a bulging sack of ammo and marched maniacally into the American Civic Association Friday, killing 13 people before his final act of failure.

Police believe the 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, who arrived in body armor, planned to go out in a blaze of glory with cops.

But he got cold feet when he heard the sirens and put a bullet between his eyes.

“He must have been a coward,” said Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski said.

“We speculate that when he heard the sirens, that 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.”

A more clear picture emerged today of the tale of woe that led Wong to his grisly end, which took him to and from California and back to his parents’ bleak home outside gritty Binghamton.

In his final months, Wong was miserable, surviving on $200 in unemployment benefits after getting canned from his job at a vacuum cleaner plant last November.

By the time he was ready to commit his coldblooded crime, the only place he found solace was exercising a gym, a pal said.

“He seemed a little depressed,” said Son Quach, a grocery store owner who had worked with Wong several years ago and met up with him again just two weeks ago at the Court Jester gym in Johnson City.

“He was upset . . . he don’t have a job here,” said Quach’s wife, Hue Huynh.

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

Quach tried to make Wong feel better by telling him he was still young and a job would come around.

But Wong was inconsolable and only whined about his “bad luck,” she said.

Over the past few months, Wong had been taking English courses at the American Civic Association. He stopped showing up after becoming an object of mockery because he could hardly speak the language.

“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.

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 ethnically 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 came of the case.

His family eventually settled in Binghamton.

Several years ago, Wong left upstate for California, where he got a job driving a delivery truck for a food company called Kikka Sushi and lived in a cheap Inglewood motel. He passed his free time silently smoking cigarettes in his room.

The fleabag pay-by-the-month joint — near the airport with bars on the windows — is full of hard-luck cases like his own.

All he had in his apartment 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.”

When shown a recent picture of Wong, Sherman said he looked like he had lost some weight.

Los Angeles court records also show that 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 told Quach that he was disgruntled at the company, where he made $500 per week.'””

One the few sources of joy for Wong were his guns, which he liked to fire at local ranges. He owned the two that were found on his body after Friday’s massacre — 9mm and .45-caliber pistols.

He had a gun permit since the mid-1990s, but New York state officials looking into his license investigated him in 1999 after an informant said that he was planning to rob a bank and had a “crack or cocaine” habit, Zikuski said. Nothing ever came of the allegations.

While living back in Binghamton, Wong was able to hold down a steady job at the Shop Vac plant in nearby Union. He was fired in November.

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 American Civic Association.

But, once again, he failed by hardly bothering to even 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 replacement, Roberta King, 72, wound up dead.

“He didn’t ever establish any relationships. I can’t say he was friendly or not. Nothing stood out about him.”

While Wong was little known, his father Henry was respected in the Binghamton area for helping immigrants though work at the World Relief Organization. Hayes told The Post that she wished he had come to her, or someone, for help.

“This was a nasty act of irrationality, why did he have to do that?” she asked.

“We could have been there for him if he needed support. The class was kind to him . . . It’s a true American nightmare.”

Additional reporting by Julia Dahl, Tori Richards, Brad Hamilton and AP

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