Woman Goes Postal, Kills Six, Self

A female former postal employee shot seven people before killing herself, CNN reports.

A female former employee opened fire at a 24-hour postal service sorting facility in Goleta, California, killing six people and critically wounding another, before turning the gun on herself, authorities said early Tuesday. “That’s what we believe,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Anderson said. The shootings took place around 9:15 p.m. Monday (12:15 a.m. ET Tuesday).

SWAT teams found seven people dead inside the building where about 40 to 50 people had been working, Anderson said. The shootings took place “at different areas around the building,” he added. “One of the deceased appeared to have suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” he said. “We have concluded the search inside, and we do not believe there is any further threat to the community.”

This is the first incident involving a female postal worker I can recall.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Elmo says:

    Back in the day ….. I was a pizza pilot in Babylon (Santa Barbara). Postal shootings were not unheard of then. On one occasion, I did deliver a pie to the Goleta facility. You could just feel it in the air. Something wrong. Something dark. Something tangible. Whether borne of a career as a functionary in a giant faceless bureaucracy, management, or some collective hypnosis. The foreboding was pronounced and never left me. My visit to the interior of the facility lasted no more than five minutes.