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Ohio Workplace Violence

April 9th, 2008 Posted by Amelia

Workplace violence is an ongoing problem, with several new episodes pointing out the importance of taking precautions. Employers should have an emergency plan in place, should take steps to prevent incidents, and train both employees and managers in how to respond when violence occurs.

A notorious incident of workplace violence was the shooting at the Northern Illinois University (NIU) campus in DeKalb, Illinois, on February 14. Gunman Steven Kazmierczak stormed a lecture hall and killed 6 people, injured 16, and then turned his weapon on himself.

The young man was a former NIU graduate student who had transferred to the University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana to pursue a graduate degree in social work. At NIU, he was enrolled in the graduate Criminal Studies program, and was described by professors as an award-winning student, both calm and committed. There were reports that he had stopped taking medications 3 weeks earlier and had been acting erratically.

A robber killed 5 women on February 2 when trying to rob a women’s apparel shop in a mall in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park. The robber pretended to be a delivery man, then bound 6 victims with duct tape in the back of the Lane Bryant store. Two of them were customers who had come in while the robbery was underway.

While the man was robbing the store, the store manager dialed 911. When the gunman discovered the call he fired on all 6 women, killing 5, before fleeing.

Three city officials and 2 police officers died when a gunman fired his weapon at a city council meeting in Kirkwood, Missouri on February 7. The mayor was injured in the hail of bullets. The gunman was a political activist who, on 2 occasions in the past, had been thrown out of council meetings.

Incidents also occurred in 2007. In one, a retired city maintenance worker in Alexandria, Louisiana shot 5 people, killing 2 of them, at a downtown law office. Police were in a standoff with the killer, John Ashley, for 10 hours before killing him in an exchange of gunfire.

More Workplace Violence

Recently, tragic episodes of workplace violence occurred in Missouri and Illinois. They are not, however, the only such cases. In 2007, several episodes occurred, including the massacre at Virginia Tech.

The Virginia Tech episode remains the worst such tragedy in 2007. In that shooting, a heavily armed young man killed 32 students and staff and wounded another 17 before fatally turning his weapon on himself as police officers moved in on him. The young man, Seung-Hui Cho, had chained the doors of a campus building shut before opening fire.

OSHA, (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) said the shooter demonstrated many of the danger signs of impending workplace violence. Cho was not seeking treatment for his history of mental problems. He had an unhealthy interest in weapons, and had a tendency to developed what have been called irrational crushes on women who were hardly known to them. Once developing the crushes, he would engage in stalker-like behavior and become jealous. Cho would go into fits of rage.

At the University of Wisconsin Madison a man attempted “suicide by cop’” hoping to provoke a shootout with police that would leave him dead, law enforcement officers said. The man threatened to blow up a nearby hospital and fired shots near the building on September 25. The bomb threat was later discovered to be false.

The estranged husband of a 40-year-old waitress at an Orlando Denny’s stabbed her to death over the Labor Day weekend of 2007. The man’s vicious attack was witnessed by several families who had recently left Walt Disney World. Customers and coworkers at the restaurant on International Drive gave chase, but the man escaped over a fence, leaving a shoe behind. The woman died of her injuries despite the efforts of paramedics.

During a tragic event in September two students, aged 17, were shot to death outside a dining hall on the campus of Delaware State University. The 1,700 students of the campus were confined to their dormitories and the campus went on lockdown. Word of the shooting and lockdown went out on cell phones.