Police look for motive in deadly postal shooting

James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston and an expert on homicides, said the death toll might be the highest ever for any workplace shooting carried out by a woman.

“Men, more than women, tend to view their self-worth by what they do” at work, Fox said. Men also appear more prone to use violence in seeking revenge while “women tend to view murder as a last resort,” he said.

As the shooting began, some of the 80 or so workers streamed out of the building. Some ran to a firehouse.

“I was dumping mail on a belt when the gunshots suddenly ‘boom, boom, boom, boom!”’ said postal worker Alger Busante, 56. He rushed out of the building.

“It is really very shocking. This is a peaceful place,” Busante said.

Postal employee Charles Kronick told KEYT-TV in Santa Barbara that he was inside the building when he heard shots. “I heard something that sounded like a pop, and then I heard a couple seconds later, another pop, pop, pop,” Kronick said.

Kronick said his boss came running over and told him to get out of the building, and “we all hightailed it out real quick.”

The dead were identified as Ze Fairchild, 37, Maleka Higgins, 28, Nicola Grant, 42, Guadalupe Swartz, 52, and Dexter Shannon, 57.

Postmaster General John E. Potter said counselors would be available to the families and employees. “Our heartfelt prayers and condolences go out to the families of the victims and to our employees who have suffered through this tragic incident,” he said in a statement issued in Washington.

Deadliest workplace shooting since 2003
It was the deadliest shooting at any U.S. workplace since 2003, when 48-year-old Doug Williams gunned down 14 co-workers, killing six, and then committed suicide at a Lockheed Martin aircraft parts plant in Meridian, Miss.

It also was the bloodiest rampage at a U.S. postal installation since 1986, when a mailman killed 14 people in Edmond, Okla., and then took his own life. Postal installations were hit with a string of deadly shootings in the mid-1980s and early ’90s.

The nation’s last postal shooting was in 1998, when a 27-year-old letter carrier fatally shot a post office clerk in Dallas after they argued in a break room. The gunman was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

About 300 people are employed at the Goleta plant, situated about a mile from the ocean, with the mountains as a backdrop. But most of the employees were not on duty at the time of the shooting. Goleta (pronounced goh-LEE-tuh) is about 90 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Employees were told to report Tuesday to another processing center in nearby Oxnard.

MORE FROM CRIME & COURTS

Crime & courts Section Front

NYC cop kills man in Times Square shootout   100-year-old child molester to be freed SEC probes 9 deals for insider trading: report Raw deal? Woman charged over steak attack Cops: Va. student’s rifle jammed US killings suspect waives right to speedy trial Ky. clinic killing highlights region's drug issues Crime & courts Section Front   Add Crime & courts headlines to your news reader: