XPost: alt.private.investigator, alt.sci.sociology, alt.america   
   XPost: alt.education   
   From: thanks.democrats@splcenter.org   
      
   EDMOND POST OFFICE MASSACRE.   
   No strangers to large-scale episodes of violence, Oklahomans   
   have endured collective and individual events ranging from the   
   1868 Battle of the Washita to the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing.   
   The event that occurred on August 20, 1986, at the United States   
   Post Office in Edmond was, at that time, the state's largest and   
   the nation's third-largest mass murder committed by a single   
   individual in a single incident (the Federal Bureau of   
   Investigation officially defines mass murder as murder of a   
   minimum of four victims by a single person in a single incident).   
      
   USPS letter carrier Patrick H. Sherrill, a "disgruntled postal   
   worker," fit the profile of a potential mass killer. A socially   
   inept loner, he was unable to hold a job for long and blamed   
   management for his problems. His fascination with guns was fed   
   by service in the U.S. Marines and active participation in the   
   Oklahoma Air National Guard, in which he became a small-arms   
   expert. Frustrated at being formally disciplined by his postal   
   supervisor several times, Sherrill had on two occasions   
   threatened revenge. After receiving a reprimand on August 19, he   
   reported to work on the morning of August 20 armed with three   
   semiautomatic pistols and ammunition. He entered the facility,   
   shot his supervisor to death, and tracked his co-workers through   
   the building, killing fourteen and wounding six. He then killed   
   himself.   
      
   In 1987 a seven-thousand-page U.S. Postal Inspector's Report   
   analyzed the Edmond tragedy, and a one-day congressional hearing   
   allowed the survivors and families a brief forum on March 18,   
   1987. Each concluded that measures should have been in place to   
   profile Sherrill and prevent his hiring and to apply   
   occupational health and safety standards and federal regulations   
   to postal facilities.   
      
   No words can assess or mitigate the shooting's terrible impact   
   on the victims and their families. Emotional and physical   
   recoveries were slow, but sure. To honor the dead and the   
   survivors, in 1989 the community of Edmond and the U.S. Postal   
   Service placed a large memorial on the grounds of the Edmond   
   Post Office. Sculptor Richard Muno depicted a standing man and   
   woman holding a yellow ribbon; they are surrounded by fourteen   
   fountains, one for each victim. The inscription lists them:   
   "Patricia Ann Chambers, Judy Stephens Denney, Richard C. Esser,   
   Jr., Patricia A. Gabbard, Jonna Ruth Gragert, Patty Jean   
   Husband, Betty Ann Jared, William F. Miller, Kenneth W. Morey,   
   Leroy Orrin Phillips, Jerry Ralph Pyle, Paul Michael Rockne,   
   Thomas Wade Shader, Jr., Patti Lou Welch."   
      
   The Edmond incident was one of fifteen homicide incidents by   
   postal employees from 1986 through 1999 in which thirty-four   
   postal workers and six nonemployees were killed. In turn, these   
   spawned numerous workplace-violence studies by criminologists,   
   psychiatrists, and federal agencies. New hiring, employee   
   management, and safety practices did result, and federal law   
   concerning homicide against federal employees was expanded in   
   1996 (after the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing) to include all   
   federal employees.   
      
   In perspective, by the year 2000 workplace violence took the   
   lives of an average of one thousand persons per year, in all   
   workplace environments. Of those, only .2 percent (two-tenths of   
   one percent) of incidents involved postal workers. It is ironic   
   and unfortunate that at the end of the twentieth century the   
   Edmond Post Office Massacre was most often remembered for   
   instigating the use of the term "going postal" to describe   
   workplace violence in general.   
      
   Dianna Everett   
      
   http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=ED003   
             
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)