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Louisiana Workplace Violence

February 11th, 2008 Posted by Amelia

A female student at Louisiana Technical College is charged with a workplace shooting.

According to the police, the event took place on Friday, Feb. 8 at the school’s Baton Rouge campus. Police responded to a 911 call shortly after 8:30. At the scene, they found three women dead inside a classroom. One of those killed was apparently the shooter. There were about 20 people, including students and an instructor, inside the classroom when the shots were fired.

The school was locked down for about 2 hours, with other students and professors kept in their classrooms until police determined that there was no further danger.

Classes were cancelled for the remainder of the day. A team of counselors were onsite providing support for the students, faculty, staff and family members.

Officers were called to the scene when multiple students and teachers, using cell phones, called in reports of shots fired. All of the violence was focused on one classroom. Few additional details are available on the event, but it seems probable that a female student involved in a personal dispute with other students, reacted violently.

Louisiana Technical College offers courses in aircraft maintenance, cosmetology, industrial mechanics, nurse assisting, plumbing and other vocations. The college has a total of 9 regional campuses across Louisiana.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor or DOL, such violent episodes in the workplace are decreasing. The DOL points to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures showing that in 2006, just 94 homicides occurred in the workplace, down from more than 200 per year in the early nineties.

Still, there have been a number of outbreaks of violence in the workplace in the past six months.

Three people were killed and two were injured when a 63-year-old retired city maintenance worker in Alexandria, Louisiana entered a downtown law office and started shooting. The retired worker, John Ashley, died in a gunfight with police on October 5, 2007 after a 10-hour standoff. Killed were the son of one of the office’s attorneys and a postal worker who had gone into the building to deliver mail. The injured were the attorney whose son died, another attorney, and a legal secretary. Two of the injured escaped and a third was rescued by police.

This was just once case of workplace violence in months past. One of the most tragic cases of the year was the massacre at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. In that incident, Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and staff members before killing himself as police moved in on him. Officials at the school faced criticism for not closing the campus sooner. Police faced criticism as well for writing off Cho’s original two fatal shootings as a “murder-suicide” even though no gun was found at the scene. Cho, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, demonstrated early warning signs of workplace violence, including fits of rage, an unhealthy interest in weapons, and stalker-style behavior. He had not been getting treatment for his mental health problem.

A 40-year-old waitress at an Orlando Denny’s was killed over the Labor Day weekend 2007 when her estranged husband stabbed her at the restaurant on International Drive. Both staff and customers chased the man, who escaped by jumping a fence, leaving behind a bloody knife and one of his shoes.

A man who threatened to bomb a hospital in the area of the University of Wisconsin Madison and fired shots nearby was described as suicidal by police. The man tried to force a shootout with officers, hoping to be killed in the exchange.

A shooting at Delaware State University left two 17-year-old students dead. In the tragic event in September, 2007 the university went on lockdown.