Death in the Workplace

The death of five people at the Caltrans yard in Orange is one in a series of workplace shootings by employees. A quick look at the cases:

* On July 12, 1976, Edward Charles Allaway comes to work at the Cal State Fullerton library armed with a semiautomatic rifle. He believes other workers are making pornographic films in the library and that his wife was appearing in the movies. He shoots nine people, killing seven. Victims include library employees and a retired professor.

* On June 10, 1990, a mechanic at the El Gato Repair shop in Santa Ana who had just been fired sprays the shop with gunfire, killing his boss, wounding the boss’ wife and killing a customer before the boss’ brother shoots him to death.

* On Aug. 19, 1990, Gregory Allan Sturm, who had been fired at a Tustin Super Shops auto store, returns to work and kills three employees with a handgun.

* On July 30, 1991, Michael E. Rahming, a painter at Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa who was angry with administrators for allegedly ignoring tensions in his division, shoots and kills a facilities supervisor and wounds two others.

* On May 6, 1993, postal worker Mark Richard Hilbun stabs his mother to death before going to the Dana Point post office, where he shoots and kills a co-worker. In a shooting spree that spans two days, Hilbun wounds five other people.

* On July 8, 1993, Douglas Stanley, apparently depressed that his brother and sister-in-law planned to move to Arkansas without him, opens fire at a Fountain Valley embroidery shop, leaving his sister-in-law and a co-worker dead behind the counter.

* On June 13, 1997, Soon Byung Park fired from a Santa Fe Springs embroidery firm, shoots and wounds his former business partner. Park, who lived in Orange County, also kills his former partner’s sister before fatally shooting himself.

Source: Times reports