Many Warning Signs in Shooting Spree

By Lianne Hart and Lisa Girion

July 10, 2003 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writers

MERIDIAN, Miss. — Lockheed Martin plant managers knew about Doug Williams’ volatile temper more than a year before he gunned down 14 fellow employees, killing five, a sheriff investigating the workplace shooting said Wednesday.

“They were keeping an eye on him.... They were certainly aware of the complaints of employees,” Lauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie said.

Williams, 48, a production assemblyman at a Lockheed aircrafts parts factory just outside this industrial city, killed himself with a shotgun Tuesday after the shooting spree. Workers at the plant said he had spoken openly about his hatred of blacks and had threatened to kill his co-workers.

Sollie said that because six of the 14 people killed or wounded were white, “there was no indication it involved race or gender as far as targets were concerned.” Four of the five people who died were black.

Williams’ discontent was not limited by race or gender, said Brenda DuBose, an African American who was wounded in Tuesday’s shooting. “There were black people he got along with,” she said. “He was an angry man who was mad about a lot of things.”

On the day of the shooting, Williams -- carrying a shotgun and wearing a bandoleer with ammunition -- entered the room where DuBose cowered on the floor. “Don’t worry, Bren,” he told her. “I’m not gonna shoot you.” DuBose was injured by glass shattered by a shotgun blast.

That Williams held onto his job despite employee complaints has some questioning Lockheed management. “He was a racist, he threatened people and he scared them. Why didn’t they fire him?” asked Betty Seals, whose brother Alvin Collier was shot three times but survived.

Lockheed said Wednesday it had acted decisively in the two reported instances of harassment that involved Williams, said spokesman Sam Grizzle. In December 2001, Williams allegedly threatened a black co-worker. Williams acknowledged a problem with his temper and attended two weeks of anger management counseling, Grizzle said.

The second incident, on June 12, involved white cloth booties that some of the assembly workers wore over their shoes. Williams put a bootie on his head. To some, it resembled a Ku Klux Klan hood. “It was perceived to be offensive, and an employee came to management,” Grizzle said. Williams was told to remove the slipper from his head or go home. He chose to go home and stayed away from work for a week, Grizzle said.

“Both of these incidents were taken seriously and dealt with promptly,” said Grizzle. “We can only deal with official complaints that come to the supervisor.” Other than the two complaints, “his personnel file shows solid job performance over a 20-year period.”

In most states, employers have the right to fire employees for any reason, including concerns about threats or bothersome behavior, said Allan Weitzman, a Boca Raton, Fla., partner in Proskauer Rose’s labor and employment law group. For a variety of reasons, including the investment in the employee, employers often attempt to rehabilitate problem workers first. Some firms, however, take a zero-tolerance approach.

“There are companies that say, ‘Anything that looks like it might be of a potentially violent nature, I’m not giving it a second chance,’ ” Weitzman said. “And they fire that person.”

Lockheed has said it has a zero-tolerance policy for workplace harassment.

There are few tests companies can use to screen prospective employees for violent tendencies, said Dr. John Kennedy, director of the Institute for Psychiatry and Law at the University of Cincinnati and a clinical director of the Center for Threat Assessment, which tests for workers’ propensity for violence.

Instead, he said, companies rely on other employees to bring concerns to managers.

“Even if you can’t screen for it, you should be able to identify a good portion of it while it’s happening and then step in to intervene. In this case, his co-workers are saying, ‘Yeah, he would talk about this stuff all the time,’ ” he said. “This makes me wonder how much was done.”

Legal experts said that if Williams had been cleared to return to work by anger management counselors, the company would have little legal liability for the deaths and injuries of its workers. They likely would be covered by workers’ compensation funds, which would bar lawsuits against Lockheed for job site deaths and injuries. The law would not bar discrimination suits arising from the shooting, said Richard Simmons, a partner with the Sheppard Mullin law firm in Los Angeles.

If workers can show an employer was aware of racially inappropriate comments and conduct and failed to take steps to correct them, they might have a claim under the federal antidiscrimination statute, he said.

Because Lockheed apparently took steps to address complaints about Williams, lawyers said a case of negligence would be unlikely to prevail, thus limiting the company’s liability.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Other workplace shootings

Some recent fatal shootings at U.S. work sites:

Feb. 25, 2003: Emanuel Burl Patterson, 23, allegedly opened fire at Labor Ready Inc., a temporary employment service in Huntsville, Ala., killing four fellow job-seekers and wounding a fifth.

* Feb. 5, 2001: William D. Baker, 66, killed four people, then himself at a Navistar International engine plant in suburban Chicago.

* Dec. 26, 2000: Software tester Michael McDermott killed seven people at a Wakefield, Mass., Internet consulting company, Edgewater Technology Inc. He was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.

* March 20, 2000: Fired employee Robert Harris, 28, shot five people to death at a Dallas-area car wash. He was convicted and sentenced to death.

Source: Associated Press

Los Angeles Times

Hart reported from Meridian, Girion from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Scott Gold contributed to this report.