News Stories related to Workplace Shootings

Feb. 1, 2006 - Ex-Employee Kills 6 Others and Herself at California Postal Plant

The shooting attack at the Postal Service mail sorting plant in Goleta, Calif., on Monday night claimed its seventh victim today when Charlotta Colton, a 44-year-old training technician who had been critically wounded, was declared dead at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. The announcement was made by Theresa Rounds, a spokeswoman for the hospital, and confirmed by an official of the Postal Service.

Ms. Colton was wounded during the shooting spree by Jennifer Sanmarco, also 44, of Grants, N.M., that killed five other co-workers. Ms. Sanmarco, a former employee at the Santa Barbara Processing and Distribution Center, later killed herself with the 9-millimeter handgun used in the attack. She may have also killed a former neighbor at a Santa Barbara condominium complex where she was formerly a resident, news agencies quoted police as saying.

They said the body of Beverly Graham, 54, was discovered on Tuesday with a bullet wound to her head. The police theorized that she may have been killed a few hours before the attack at the mail plant. "Evidence and circumstances of both crimes show direct correlations between the two," The Associated Press quoted a member of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department as saying. Ms. Sanmarco had left her job at the plant in 2003 because of psychological problems. On Monday night, she used her knowledge of the center's operations to gain entry despite having an expired entry pass.

The 80 or so employees in the building fled as she fired, reloading at least once, said Sheriff Jim Anderson of Santa Barbara County. The authorities had not determined if she was selecting the victims, all women except one, or shooting at random in what was one of the deadliest rampages at a Postal Service building. After working as a sorting clerk for six years, the woman went on medical disability for unspecified mental problems in June 2003 after co-workers reported her acting strangely and called sheriff's deputies, postal authorities said.

Sheriff Anderson and Postal Service officials provided only sketchy information on the woman's background and the circumstances of her previous confrontation with employees and departure from the job. "She wasn't considered a threat to anybody, but she was acting in a way that concerned employees," Randy DeGasperin, a United States Postal inspector, said of the 2003 incident. "They called deputies more for the safety of herself."

Monday's workplace shooting was thought to be the deadliest carried out by a woman and the highest toll since a worker at an aircraft parts plant in Meridian, Miss., killed six colleagues and wounded eight others in 2003. Employees described pandemonium as the shots rang out shortly before 9 p.m. in a 200,000-square-foot warehouselike building close to the oceanside campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Alger V. Busante, 56, a mail sorter, said he had just dumped some mail onto a conveyer belt when he suddenly heard "boom, boom, boom." Mr. Busante said he was unsure if the belt had malfunctioned or shots had been fired until screams arose from all around. "People were running out, so we followed them," Mr. Busante said, speaking on Tuesday as he returned to pick up his car. "We didn't know if we were going to be shot."

Officials identified the victims as Ze Fairchild, 37, and Maleka Higgins, 28, of Santa Barbara; Nicola Grant, 42, and Guadalupe Swartz, 32, of Lompoc; and Dexter Shannon, 57, of Oxnard.

The violence provided a flashback to the spate of shootings at post offices and related facilities in the 1980's and 90's. The last such shooting was eight years ago in Dallas, when a letter carrier killed a clerk after arguing in a break room. The deadliest was the August 1986 killings of 14 people by a co-worker in Edmond, Okla., who then killed himself. "Going postal" entered the lexicon, but an independent report, based on a two-year study and prepared for the postmaster general in 2000, said postal workers were no more inclined than others to commit workplace violence. “This report should shatter the myth that postal workers are more violent than other workers," James Califano, the chairman of a Postal Service commission studying the violence, said at the time. The report did find a higher than usual number of grievances and discrimination complaints among postal employees that seemed to go on for years.

Workplace violence generally has been declining, with the number of reported cases dropping 14 percent from 1999 to 2004, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What was unusual about this workplace shooting was that a woman committed it.

From 1976 to 2004, women made up just under 5 percent of the people who committed mass shootings and about 7 percent of those who killed in the workplace, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston who has studied workplace crime. "It is extremely rare," said Mr. Fox, who found no higher toll of victims killed by a woman in the workplace than Monday's. "Part of it may be the way men and women look at the workplace. Men more than women tend to look at work as the most important thing in life."

"Our heartfelt prayers and condolences go out to the families of the victims and to our employees who have suffered through this tragic incident," Postmaster General John E. Potter said in a statement from Washington. New York Times