A woman has killed six people and critically injured another after she opened fire on former colleagues at a postal sorting office in America.
The assailant turned the gun on herself after the shooting spree which began late on Monday evening, in the Californian coastal town of Goleta, near Santa Barbara, about 100 miles north-west of Los Angeles.
Armed police called to the US Postal Service office found two bodies in front of the building and four others inside, said Sergeant Erik Rainey, of the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department.
Sgt Rainey said: “Deputies responded to reports of shots fired and found two victims deceased of gunfire in the front loading area of the mail sorting facility.
Advertisement
“At present we believe there are six victims. The suspect is believed to be a female ex-employee of this post office who entered the building with an unknown type of firearm and began shooting employees.”
The incident sent dozens of employees running from the sprawling distribution centre and prompted authorities to warn nearby residents to stay indoors.
Charles Kronick, a postal worker who was inside the building when shots rang out, said: “I heard something that sounded like a pop, and then I heard a couple seconds later, another pop, pop, pop. We all high-tailed it out real quick.”
Police have not so far speculated on the woman’s motive for the killings, but newspaper reports suggested the woman was a disgruntled ex-employee who was fired two years ago.
Reports quoted neighbours as saying that they had heard eight to 10 shots fired before police arrived on the scene.
Advertisement
The attack by the woman is the latest in a string of high-profile shooting by US mail workers over recent years. The phenomenon has given rise to the colloquial expression “going postal,” indicating a high level of anger and frustration exploding into violence in the workplace.
In August 1986, postal worker Patrick Sherrill shot and killed 14 fellow employees and wounded six others in less than 10 minutes in Edmond in the midwestern state of Oklahoma.
Then, in November 1991, Thomas McIlvane - another fired worker - killed four supervisors and wounded five employees at his former post office in Michigan before shooting himself.
Two years later, another disgruntled worker went on a deadly rampage in a post office in Dearborn, Michigan, killing one and wounding two others before also turning the gun on himself.
The huge facility in Goleta, is close to the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California.