Seven workers are dead and several more were wounded after the overnight store manager at a Virginia Walmart store opened fire on his colleagues last week with a 9mm handgun he had legally purchased on the morning of the rampage.
The shooter was identified by police as 31-year-old Andre Bing, who took his own life after shooting his co-workers.
Chesapeake Police Chief Mark Solesky told reporters that Bing used a pistol in the attack, which also left four other people hospitalized. One of the victims was a 16-year-old boy.
An employee said, “He didn’t say a word, he didn’t say anything at all.”
The Chesapeake Police Department identified the fatal victims as 38-year-old Brian Pendleton of Chesapeake; 52-year-old Kellie Pyle of Chesapeake; 43-year-old Lorenzo Gamble of Chesapeake; 70-year-old Randy Belvins of Chesapeake; 22-year-old Tyneka Johnson of Portsmouth; and a 16-year-old boy — whose name was withheld by authorities — but is identified as Fernando Chavez-Barron, according to a GoFundMe set up for his family.
The Virginia shooting came a mere three days after a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado left five dead and 17 wounded.
According to OSHA, acts of violence and other injuries is currently the third-leading cause of fatal occupational injuries in the United States.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), of the 5,333 fatal workplace injuries that occurred in the United States in 2019, 761 were cases of intentional injury by another person.
According to officials, Bing penned a rambling “Death Note,” in which he complained that his co-workers were “idiots” who he was angry with for comparing him to a notorious cannibal serial killer.
“They laughed at me and said that I was like Jeffrey Dahmer … Sorry everyone but I did not plan this I promise things just fell in place like I was led by the Satan,” Bing wrote before slaughtering six of his colleagues in the break room at the start of their night shift Tuesday.
Dahmer was a notorious loner who murdered 17 young men — some of whom he tried to turn into sex zombies, and some of whom he ate body parts. He was killed in prison in 1994.
Police in Chesapeake, Virginia, released Bing’s redacted screed, which was discovered during a forensic analysis of the suspect’s phone after his massacre.
Officials also revealed loner Bing, who had no prior criminal history, legally purchased the murder weapon, a 9mm handgun, on the morning of the rampage.
However it manifests itself, workplace violence is a major concern for employers and employees nationwide.
OSHA believes that a well-written and implemented workplace violence prevention program, combined with engineering controls, administrative controls, and training can reduce the incidence of workplace violence in both the private sector and federal workplaces.