It seems that there are delayed reactions in response to firings. When reading articles about a workplace shooting that's taken place, it seems many times the shooter left some time before.
I do know of an exception, though. An employee of the City of LA was about to be discipline and felt he was being targeted by his boss and mistreated. He came in one day to Piper Tech, the building where General Services, and now much of the Info Tech Agency (my hubby's dept.) works, and killed four supervisors. According to what hubby knew, this employee wasn't among the hardest working ones (even though there are many slackers there, in all honesty), but there was a lot of validity in the mistreatment claim that was used by the defense during the trial. The man is now serving a life sentence.
That was in 1995, and there are still ramifications to this violence. Unfortunately, TPTB haven't learned from how they treat workers. In fact, one person did bring a violence claim (against someone who has had violence complaints in the workplace and at home before) to his boss last year, and the boss sat on it. After a month, he asked my hubby for advice and he suggested going to the department's personnel head, who told hubby that a month isn't too long to bring forward a claim. Idiots.
Unfortunately, human behavior isn't always predictable.
AP – This image made from video provided by Channel 13 News in Orlando, Fla., shows Jason Rodriguez
By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press Writer Mike Schneider, Associated Press Writer
ORLANDO, Fla. – A gunman opened fire Friday in the offices of an engineering firm where he was let go more than two years ago, authorities said, killing one person and injuring five others.
Jason Rodriguez, 40, surrendered about three hours later, after officers saw him through the window of his mother's home and asked him to come outside, Orlando Police Chief Val Demings said.
Asked by a reporter outside the police station why he did it, he replied: "Because they left me to rot."
Demings said Rodriguez brought a handgun to the firm in a downtown office tower where he once worked as an engineer, but investigators are not sure what his motive was.
"This is a tragedy, no doubt about it, especially on the heels of the tragedy in Fort Hood that is on our minds," Demings said. "I'm just glad we don't have any more fatalities or any more injuries than we currently have."
Charles W. Price, an attorney who represented Rodriguez in a bankruptcy case, declined to comment.
Camille Previlon told The Associated Press her uncle, engineer Guy Lungenbel, was shot in the back and was able to talk but had not said much about the shooting.
"He is stable," she said. "He's just hurting real bad in the back."
Everyone who was shot was in the offices of Reynolds Smith & Hills, on the eighth floor. The five survivors were in stable condition, Demings said.
A somber Gov. Charlie Crist visited some of the wounded at Orlando Regional Medical Center on Friday afternoon.
"They're obviously traumatized," he said. "At the same time, I was impressed with their spirit and strength."
He said he was thankful the shooting was not worse and said the victims "felt very lucky and blessed to be alive."
Reynolds Smith & Hills spokesman Mike Bernos said Rodriguez was an entry-level engineer who was fired in June 2007 after working there for a year.
"His performance wasn't up to our standards, so we terminated him," Bernos said. There had been no contact between the company and Rodriguez since then.
After the lunchtime shooting, some people streamed out of the Legion Place building while others holed up in their offices. A major highway was closed and nearby schools were locked down.
Greg Cross, who works in a real estate office on the 12th floor, said he and his co-workers barricaded themselves inside after hearing about the gunman on television.
"We were terrified," he said. "We locked the door and put a filing cabinet in front of the door and just waited."
Mark Vella, who works in a different office on the same floor, said he and five co-workers also pulled a filing cabinet in front of their door. They prayed and talked about what to do if the gunman showed up.
"It was a little scary, a little unnerving," Vella said. "We were afraid the guy was still in the building and making the rounds."
___
Associated Press writers Travis Reed, Kelli Kennedy, Jennifer Kay, Laura Wides-Munoz, David Fischer and Damian Grass in Miami; Antonio Gonzalez, Mitch Stacy and Tamara Lush in Orlando; and Christine Armario in Tampa contributed to this report.
By Presidential order, all U.S. flags at federal agencies and facilities are to be lowered to half-staff to honor the victims of the tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5. The U.S. Flags will be flown at half-staff until Tuesday Nov. 10, at sunset.
A passenger plane missed a runway in eastern Congo, abruptly coming to a halt in a hardened lava field at the end of the airstrip, according to Associated Press and Agence France Presse
reports on November 19th. Initial broadcasts on a United Nations radio station indicate that 20 people on the 117 passenger flight were injured in the accident, reports the Associated Press.
According to the Agence France Presse, the MD-80 airliner was flying from the Congolese capital of Kinshasa to Goma. The aircraft was operated by Compagnie Africaine d'Aviation, an airline based in Kinshasa, and one that is on a list of airlines deemed unsafe to operate in the European Union airspace, according to the Aviation Safety Network. David Blattner, the head of the airline, told the AFP that the pilot failed to break after landing, missing a turn at the end of the runway at the Goma, Congo airport.
The plane's nose proceeded to smash into chunks of hardened lava positioned at the end of the runway. Passengers were evacuated from the aircraft on emergency chutes in rainy conditions.
Molten lava gushed onto the airport's runway after a 2002 volcanic eruption, diminishing the length of the runway from two miles to less than a mile. The lava wall was never completely cleared from the runway and is blamed for a fatal accident in 2007 when a cargo plane hit the hardened lava before catching on fire and killing at least eight, the Associated Press reported. Another fatal accident in Goma occurred in 2008 when a DC-9 slammed into a busy market after takeoff, killing at least 37, according to a Agence France Press report on April 15, 2008.
Congolese airline pilots have been protesting the unsafe runway, saying it is too short to land MD-80 planes.
The Congo has experienced more fatal plane crashes than any other African country since 1945, according to information from the Aviation Safety Network. Despite the poor aviation safety record, the AP notes that flying is still considered the easiest way to traverse the enormous nation.
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