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3 people are dead and 2 people are injured after a gunman opens fire in an office building. He then, [sic] turned the gun on himself. NBC4's Lolita Lopez reports.
Edison Gunman, Victims Identified
Andre Turner opened fire on co-workers with a semi-automatic weapon on Friday, killing two people before turning the gun on himself
By Annette Arreola, Sharon Bernstein, Olsen Ebright and Jonathan Lloyd
Saturday, Dec 17, 2011 | Updated 6:16 PM PST
Two men who died after a co-worker opened fire at a Southern California Edison facility in Irwindale have been identified as Henry Serrano, 56, of Walnut, and Robert Lindsay, 53, of Chino, the Los Angeles County Coroner's office said Saturday.
The gunman, who committed suicide after a rampage that killed two people and wounded two others, has also been identified. He was Andre Turner, 48, of Norco.
Turner is reported to have been facing possible foreclosure on his 7-figure home, now worth half of what the Turners paid for it years ago. Foreclosing on the property was an option that Turner seemed to be accepting, according to his realtor.
Additional victims that were wounded include Angela Alvarez, 46, of Glendale, and Abhay Pimpale, 38, of Montebello. Both were transported to USC Hospital, and their conditions are unknown.
"This is one of the most horrible days in our company’s history,” said Ted Craver, CEO of Edison International, parent company of SCE. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the employees.”
Employees at the Irwindale facility will not return to work Monday as investigators are still trying to determine the motive for Friday's shooting, calling the process laborious and enormous.
"It's a slow process," said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Sheriff's Department. "There's a lot of people to interview - eleven hundred people work there."
Homicide detectives, who are also investigating a deputy-involved shooting in Lincoln Heights on Saturday morning and another in the City of Industry early Friday, left the Irwindale scene at 3 a.m. Saturday.
"It's been a busy 24 hours" for the homicide bureau, Whitmore said.
In a press release, the company promised to set up a fund for victims and survivors, and said it would provide grief counseling and other services for employees and families. The utility also confirmed that Turner was an employee.
The shootings took place at about 1:30 p.m. Friday at an Edison facility on Rivergrade Road. The building primarily houses employees who work in Edison's Information Technology and Transmission and Distribution divisions, the company said.
Turner is believed to have used a semi-automatic handgun in his murderous spree.
After the shooting on Friday, dozens of people were seen leaving the building in a single-file line, holding their hands in the air.
"We heard a lot of sirens and helicopters overhead. We heard over the PA system that there was an emergency," said Tammy Gann of the San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership, which works in the same building.
Authorities said they were combing the rooms of the three-story office complex which requires an authorized card swipe to enter the building.
Southern California Edison locked down all of its facilities this afternoon upon learning of the gunman, but those restrictions have since been lifted on all but the Rivergrade facility, which was almost exclusively information technology-based.
One man told NBC4 News that he received texts from his daughter who was in the building at the time.
“The shooter was working today and talked to my big boss five minutes before he started shooting,” the man said, reading the message on his phone.
Another man with a relative in the building said she texted him to tell him that two people had been shot. The worker told him the gunman walked in and told a manager he was going to shoot him before opening fire.
Two nearby schools were placed on lockdown due to police activity. [N.S.: Bull. The schools were placed on lockdown, due to the criminal activities of one Andre Turner. Who snuck that one in?]
Around 2:30 p.m., students at Walnut Elementary School were dismissed, said Cynthia Cuevas, Baldwin Park Unified School Assistant Superintendent.
At Olive Junior High School, which was also on lockdown, worried parents flocked to pick up their children when a staggered release began at around 3 p.m. Friday.
"Your children are safe," Cuevas said. [Maybe.]
[Previously, at WEJB/NSU:
Was Black SoCal Edison Mass Shooter Andre Turner Motivated by Racism?;
“Mass Murderer was a ‘Hero,’ Say Blacks” (Charles “Cookie” Thornton’s Kirkwood Massacre);
“Family: Racism caused Conn. gunman to snap” (Omar Thornton’s Manchester Massacre);
Stories Related to Shareef Allman’s Cupertino Mass Shooting;
Omar Thornton II: Shareef Allman was Beloved by Blacks, but was a Paranoid, Racist Employee from Hell Who Endangered Everyone Else (contains links to related articles);
“Finally, Two Reporters Start Giving the Truth about Racist Black Mass Shooter, Shareef Allman!”; and
“Wikipedia’s Censors are Hard at Work, Ensuring That Readers Do Not Learn about Crimes Committed by Members of ‘Protected Classes’ Against Members of ‘Non-Protected’ Classes.”]
5 comments:
This is why you need carry permit **uniformity** in Calif. People in rural counties can get carry permits, where they are least needed, but people in urban counties cannot. So only police and crooks (and VIPs like Sen. Feinstein who can pull strings) can carry. That's just stupid. Way to go, Sacramento. The blood of innocents is on your hands.
I am an SCE employee, and posting these comments under a pseudonym.
Southern California Edison is a company that runs on FEAR. Managers bully their employees to perform. Bullying ranges from in-your-face yelling and making violent gestures, to more subtle, persistent forms, like making jokes at an employee's expense; discrediting or maligning employees at meetings attended by hundreds of people; applying uneven performance standards among his or her reports; or going out of the way to omit an individual when handing out kudos to a particular group.
Based on my own experiences, what I've observed, and what I've heard from colleagues, I believe Turner's actions were the result of ongoing, systematic bullying by his manager. Bullying behavior at SCE flies under the radar, and its existence is almost always denied. When it is reported, the company refuses to get involved, tells the employee to "work it out" with her or her manager, or makes the employee feel at fault.
The employee deals with this in his or her own way. Some learn to live with it, based on the mistaken assumption it's better than being unemployed. Others let the constant browbeating, humiliation, ridicule and undue penalization get the better of them and launch into a shooting rampage.
As the Rivergrade story unfolds, I think we'll find that Turner's actions were not the result of a single event, but were caused by management's constant, ongoing bullying and humiliation, which is so germaine to the Southern California Edison culture.
I am a former Southern California Edison employee and am confirming that this Company runs on FEAR & FAVORTISM. Since the Rivergrade shooting, the IMT reports and work environmental surveys, nothing of significance has been accomplished at the management level to create a harmonic and productive environment. Waste is rampant at SCE and the ultimate victims are the ratepayers. There is no control for this sort of behavior because it starts at the very top of SCE's management ladder.
Although I do not know Andre Turner or work in Rivergrade, many of my colleagues who worked with him and his director superior said Turner was a constant victim of bullying. Mr. Turner tried on more than a dozen occasion to have his work environment evaluated but was systematically ignored by both Ethics & Compliance as well as Human Resources.
This is no longer a “family and friendly” place to work, those are the by-gone years. Going forward, it’s simply a mechanical process of trying to do more with less. Employees that are use to the cushion environment are facing the stark reality of every man for themselves and some do crack under pressure. I have no advise for the top level management because they’ve ignored everyone else’s advise. Let the chips fall where they may.
Just to prove that I am not making this up, I use to work in the general office in Rosemead. The carpets were changed in 2012 and extra padding place. They were a very “specific” type and only someone working there would know. I am simply just making sure that I establish legitimacy.
As a former SCE employee, this company has accomplish minimal since December 2011. A commissioned studied published on May 2012 of SCE shows the level of intimation that many employees felt from management. In some ways it has gotten worse as now people feel the need to turn on each other in order to survive. I am going to allow you to be the judge as attached below is the link to document that has been posted on public domain.
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/452675/final-imt-report.pdf
For those that have never been an SCE employees, you will never know the level of mismanagement this utility is capable of and commits against ratepayers each and every day. My colleagues worked with Henry Serrano and used words to describe him that I cannot write here without being censored and this was before December 2011. At best he was impatient but he was a monster and proud to be this way. Managers like him though, roam the entire SCE corporation and are in every department. They abuse their staff at whim and will quash your career if they do not consider you one of "their favorites". Salaries, promotions, recognitions and educational vouchers are given based on favoritism and has nothing to do with merit. The levels of relationship based on being family members, intimate partners or friends/neighbors determined how far and how high you will move up at SCE. There’s even a term DSR (daughters, sons and relatives). This is not a joke, person in charge of Ethics and Compliance is married to one of the top person in Human Resources. Interns usually turn out to be the children of executives and are notoriously under-qualified for the job. There is no turning back for SCE, it is at a crossroad and sometimes the wound has festered for so long that it will never properly heal.
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