FRESNO, Calif. — Five days before a Tuesday rampage that left three men dead, Kori Ali Muhammad shot an unarmed security guard who he felt had insulted him at a Motel 6 when he visited a woman at the hotel, police said.

Muhammad shot the guard, 25-year-old Carl Williams, multiple times at close range shortly after 11 p.m. April 13, police said — an act that would set off a chain of events leading to the mass shooting.

Police say Muhammad gave rare and unusual details about his movements and the killings over several hours of questioning following his arrest, even returning with officers to the crimes scenes and demonstrating his actions.

“As he spoke about the shooting and shooting individuals, he did so in a very callous manner,” said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer.

On Tuesday, after Muhammad, 39, saw that he was wanted for murder, Muhammad told officers “he was not going to go down for shooting a security guard for disrespecting him but that he was going to kill as many white males as possible,” Dyer said.

Shortly before 11 a.m., he approached two men sitting in a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. truck. He told police he noticed the driver was Latino and the passenger was white so he shot four rounds into the passenger side. He killed Zackary Randalls, 34, a father of two preschoolers who had just started work as a customer-service representative for the utility and was doing a ride-along.

In the next three minutes, police say Muhammad killed two more people and shot at several others, firing 17 rounds.

Muhammad shot at another white man who had just walked out of a house, but he missed. He fired one round into a car that drove by, but then realized the people in the car were Latina and stopped shooting.

Mark Gassett, 37, had just picked up groceries at a Catholic Charities building when Muhammad shot him in the chest, and fired twice more after he fell to make sure he was dead.

Muhammad then set his sights on three white men standing at a bus stop. He shot and the men scattered. Muhammad said he selected the one who looked older and heavier, chasing David Jackson, 58, to the parking lot of a Catholic Charities building, where he shot him twice, killing him.

Muhammad starting running, until he saw a police car, which had arrived within minutes of the initial shots.

“I did it. I shot them,” Muhammad told officers as they arrested him, according to the chief.