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OSHA Warns Employers on Iowa Workplace Violence

April 8th, 2008 Posted by Amelia

Recent workplace violence incidents in a Chicago suburb, in Kirkwood, Missouri, and in DeKalb, Illinois demonstrate the need for employers to set up an emergency plan for dealing with such episodes.

Iowa employers, and those throughout the nation, are urged to take measures to prevent violence, and to train employees and managers in how to respond to violent incidents.

In Kirkwood, Missouri, a man opened fire at a city council meeting on February 7, killing 3 city officials and 2 police officers and injuring the mayor. The man was known as a political activist who had been forcibly ejected from two past council meetings.

The most notorious incident was shooting on Northern Illinois University campus in DeKalb, Illinois. Steven Kazmierczak, a former NIU graduate student who had recently transferred to the University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana, killed 6 and injured 16 before turning the gun on himself.

Kazmierczak was described by professors as an award-winning student, committed and calm, who had been actively pursuing studies in Criminal Justice. He was enrolled at the time of the shooting in a graduate degree program in social work. The young man had purchased 2 guns for “home security,” said his girlfriend, Jessica Baty. He had been irritable and stressed because of his studies, she said, but was not acting erratically. He had stopped taking his medication about 3 weeks before the episode.

A Lane Bryant women’s apparel shop in a mall in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park was the site of a tragic robbery and shooting on February 2. An armed man killed 5 women after binding a total of 6 victims with duct tape in a back room. The man had entered the store pretending to be making a delivery. When the manager attempted to call 911 the robber became enraged and killed 5 of the women. Two of them were customers who had come in during the robbery.

Violent workplace incidents occurred in 2007 as well. One, in Alexandria, Louisiana, left 2 victims dead and 3 injured before police killed the gunman. The incident took place in a downtown legal office.

More Workplace Violence

The massacre at Virginia Tech was the worst case of workplace violence in 2007.

It was not the only incident, however, and tragic episodes in Illinois and Missouri are simply the most recent cases of violence in the workplace.

Several other episodes led to tragedy or near-tragedy in 2007.

At an Orlando Denny’s during Labor Day weekend of 2007, a 40-year-old waitress was stabbed to death by her estranged husband. Several families who had recently left Walt Disney World saw the attack at the restaurant on International Drive. Coworkers and customers both pursued the attacker, who fled on foot and escaped over a fence, leaving behind one of his shoes. Paramedics tried to save the waitress, but she died of her wounds.

A tragic event in September on the campus of Delaware State University left two students shot dead. Dover, Delaware police interviewed a student following the early morning shooting outside a college dining hall. University officials put the school on lockdown, and the campus’s roughly 1,700 students were confined to their dormitories. Word of the incident and the lockdown went out on cell phones. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as other law enforcement agencies, assisted local police in the search.

At the University of Wisconsin Madison, police hunted for an apparently suicidal man who threatened to explode a bomb at a local hospital and fired off some shots near it. The bomb threat was a fake, police said, adding that the man was a case of attempted “suicide by cop.” He had apparently hoped to provoke a shoot-out with police in which he would have been killed, officers said.

At Virginia Tech 32 students and staff were killed and 17 injured in the year’s worst tragedy, on April 16, 2007. A heavily armed assailant named Seung-Hui Cho chained the doors of a campus building shut before killing and wounding his victims, then turning his weapon on himself.

OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said Cho demonstrated several warning signs of impending workplace violence. Among other things, he showed an unhealthy interest in weapons.