UPS worker kills 3 colleagues in San Francisco, turns gun on himself

[webfact]

UPS worker kills 3 colleagues in San Francisco, turns gun on himself

By Emmett Berg

 

Police officers gather outside a United Parcel Service (UPS) facility after a shooting incident was reported in San Francisco, California, U.S. June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

 

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A UPS driver opened fire with a handgun inside a United Parcel Service Inc delivery center in San Francisco on Wednesday, killing three co-workers before fatally shooting himself as police closed in, authorities and company officials said.

 

Two people wounded by gunfire were taken to a hospital. Five other people suffered less serious injuries in a frantic exit from the building, San Francisco police said.

 

The gunshot victims, like the killer, all were UPS drivers, and the attack unfolded as the workers gathered for their daily morning meeting before starting their delivery rounds, said Steve Gaut, head of investor relations at UPS.

 

Authorities did not immediately identify the suspect or the victims.

 

Assistant San Francisco Police Chief Toney Chaplin said the gunman shot himself in the head as he was confronted by officers swarming the building. The police never fired a shot.

 

Authorities offered no possible motive for the violence and Chaplin said at a news conference it was not an act of terrorism.

Police said they recovered two firearms, including the murder weapon, which they described as an assault pistol.

 

The UPS facility, a package-sorting and delivery hub that serves the greater San Francisco area and employs about 350 workers in the city's Potrero Hill area, was placed under a security lockdown for six hours.

 

"We are always saddened by the loss of life to gun violence," San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said on Twitter. "Any shooting is one shooting too many."

 

The UPS shooting erupted hours after an unrelated mass shooting at a baseball practice session in the Virginia suburbs of the nation's capital left a congressman and several others wounded before the assailant was killed by police.

 

Former congresswoman and gun-safety advocate Gabrielle Giffords, who was gravely wounded in a 2011 assassination attempt in Arizona that claimed six lives, issued a statement lamenting the shootings in Virginia and California, calling them "a stark indication of the scope of gun violence epidemic we face as Americans."

 

UPS is providing trauma and grief counseling to employees at the San Francisco center.

 

Video footage from the scene showed a massive police presence near the facility, with workers being escorted outside and embracing one another on the sidewalk. One worker was found by police hiding inside the sprawling building after the shooting, unaware that the violence was over.

 

"It was a frightful scene," Chaplin said.

 

The San Francisco bloodshed came three years after a UPS employee shot and killed two of his supervisors before turning the gun on himself at a UPS distribution center in Birmingham, Alabama. That gunman had recently been fired from the facility.

 

The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history occurred in June 2016 when a gunman claiming allegiance to the Islamic State militant group killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

 

Gun laws in the United States rank among the most permissive of any developed country, with the right to "keep and bear arms" enshrined in the Constitution's Second Amendment. Efforts to tighten national gun control measures failed after mass shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 and the nightclub shooting in Orlando.

 

(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Patrick Enright in Seattle and Nick Carey in Detroit; Writing by Jon Herskovitz and Steve Gorman; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Bill Trott)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-06-15

[nasanews]

Probably they were making fun of him.

[Rigby40]

Ban guns. Then once they start mowing down crowds with trucks, we can ban them too. 

[WhyYouTalkMeBad]

So much massacre in the USA on a daily basis. And expats are frightened of thailand?

[williamgeorgeallen]

who is going to say that all UPS drivers should be armed to stop this from happening again?

[Berkshire]

We still don't know the ethnicity/race of the killer.  It's strangely important in America because it will determine the narrative.

 

Brown/Arabic person:  "We must stop Islamic terrorism.  Ban them all!"

Hispanic:  "We must stop illegal immigration.  They're killing innocent Americans!"

African-American:  "They're all criminals!"

White person:  "We need to focus on gun control."

 

 

[rijb]

4 hours ago, halloween said:

"Going postal" - yet another fine addition to the English language from our American friends.

Are you sure you have any?  Facebook friends don't really count.

[kamahele]

And after the UPS and GOP baseball practice shootings, the price of gun manufactures' stock actually went up as more Americans will go out and buy guns... and it starts all over again.

[metisdead]

Troll posts and replies have been removed. 

[IMA_FARANG]

In the late 1850's a researcher did an experiment with Rats.

He put them in a stress filled situation, deliberately depriving some of them of food and living space.

He then created a "elite group" of other rats that had more living space and access to better food.

He ran this Rat society for several generations, carefully documenting the results.

He found that after a few Rat generations his Rat society began to destroy itself.

The elite Rats were attacked by the deprived Rats, and the elite rats who got fed without the need to work for their food became lazy and were easy prey for the deprived and hungry other  Rats.

He published his results claiming his results sowed the future of humans living in a crowded city  environment but is work was not accepted as valid because "Humans are more intelligent than Rats" and Humans would therefore not repeat his results before they came to that state

Some of us, and I am one, disagree.

I believe his carefully documented and observed results are showing what the future of our increasingly urbanized stressful environment are a preview of our future in the big cities we are creating today.

We shall see, won't we?

 

 

Edited June 15, 2017 by IMA_FARANG
coret typo

[Thaidream]

I agree completely with you views on this and the rat study is very prescient to what is occurring today in society and what we can expect. In the US, we have an economy that works well for 1% of our population- and the other 99% get the leftovers. There are solutions to all that ails society, but it means the 1% are going to have to give up some of their wealth so the rest of us can exist at a human level.  Unfortunately, the cabal we call politicians and I mean from every stripe will not allow society to evolve as necessary and just like the rats- humans will continue to turn on each other and eventually destroy each other- all because of greed. I would bet on the rats learning how to co-exist before the humans.

[Redline]

2 hours ago, IMA_FARANG said:

In the late 1850's a researcher did an experiment with Rats.

He put them in a stress filled situation, deliberately depriving some of them of food and living space.

He then created a "elite group" of other rats that had more living space and access to better food.

He ran this Rat society for several generations, carefully documenting the results.

He found that after a few Rat generations his Rat society began to destroy itself.

The elite Rats were attacked by the deprived Rats, and the elite rats who got fed without the need to work for their food became lazy and were easy prey for the deprived and hungry other  Rats.

He published his results claiming his results sowed the future of humans living in a crowded city  environment but is work was not accepted as valid because "Humans are more intelligent than Rats" and Humans would therefore not repeat his results before they came to that state

Some of us, and I am one, disagree.

I believe his carefully documented and observed results are showing what the future of our increasingly urbanized stressful environment are a preview of our future in the big cities we are creating today.

We shall see, won't we?

 

 

Yes, and it has happened with human societies as well.

[sangtip2]

I have never heard of an "Assault Pistol"    We have a new weapon -- what a crock 

[Dumbastheycome]

7 hours ago, williamgeorgeallen said:

who is going to say that all UPS drivers should be armed to stop this from happening again?

Maybe  they  should be  required  o  deliver  using  APC's ? 

Then  when whatever  makes  em  flip  the  bonnet the  cn   do   some   really   media  worthy   damage?

[Foozool]

5 hours ago, IMA_FARANG said:

In the late 1850's a researcher did an experiment with Rats.

He put them in a stress filled situation, deliberately depriving some of them of food and living space.

He then created a "elite group" of other rats that had more living space and access to better food.

He ran this Rat society for several generations, carefully documenting the results.

He found that after a few Rat generations his Rat society began to destroy itself.

The elite Rats were attacked by the deprived Rats, and the elite rats who got fed without the need to work for their food became lazy and were easy prey for the deprived and hungry other  Rats.

He published his results claiming his results sowed the future of humans living in a crowded city  environment but is work was not accepted as valid because "Humans are more intelligent than Rats" and Humans would therefore not repeat his results before they came to that state

Some of us, and I am one, disagree.

I believe his carefully documented and observed results are showing what the future of our increasingly urbanized stressful environment are a preview of our future in the big cities we are creating today.

We shall see, won't we?

 

 

Humans are more intelligent than rats therefore could be more dangerous than rats. 

[anon4546543]

3 hours ago, Foozool said:

Humans are more intelligent than rats therefore could be more dangerous than rats. 

I doubt that most humans are more intelligent than rats.  Rats seem to look after their kin until they can fend for themselves.  Rats always work for a living.

 

 James Clavell wrote a fictional account of his life in Changi during WW11. It involves poms, yanks and aussies. The title was King Rat.

 

In fact life in prison or concentration camps can always be described in terms of what happens to large cities and the population.

 

Ps. I believe King Rat should be required reading for all westerners. It is humorous, challenging but never vindictive. In the face of enormous odds, only the strong and adaptable survive.