Seems like a woman went postal in California. First time I’ve heard of a female postal shooter.
Time to update those ‘Goin Postal’ world tour t-shirts.
-Tcat
I think the shooter that shot up the kindergarten class in Scotland was a woman.
Bad memory, the Dunblane shooter was a man. I do however remember at least once hearing of a woman shooter somewhere.
Here’s the snopes article on the “I Don’t Like Mondays” shooting, the one you are probably thinking of.
Yeah, there was one a few years ago, and, in fact, a Doper tackled the girl. It was in the mid-east, I believe, and outside somewhere. She was reloading and our-very-own knocked her down and others jumped on her. I never heard of it in the news (I’m over here, so a lot of news passes me by), but read about it in a thread or three.
I was actually thinking about Postal ‘Going Postal’ postal shootings…But I guess that brush can be wider in this case.
-Tcat
And there was Laurie Dan, who shot up a school in Evanston here about a decade or so ago.
No shit? I missed this one. Linkety-link, s’il vous plait?
This happened down the street from where I work. It’s supposedly the worst ever workplace shooting committed by a woman. It’s the first shooting by a postal worker at work in over seven years and that one was a personal grudge between two people rather than a disgruntled employee or former employee.
The wife of a former co-worker of mine works there. She was nice enough to give me a tour of the place several years ago. This is the main regional processing plant for the area and it was absolutely amazing to see the machinery and logistics for the operation. It gave me an immense respect for our postal system.
The list of the people who were killed and injured hasn’t come out yet. My friend’s wife worked days the last that I heard so she is probably not on the list but I am still nervously waiting until I find out that she’s OK.
This reminds me of a shirt I saw a girl wearing…
“Beware: I have PMS and a gun”
Seriously though, how awful for the families.
I read this post and I picture Jon Stewert delivering it at his Daily Show desk.
This is unbelievable. My former co-worker’s wife, Charlotte Colton, was one of the victims. She is in critical condition with a gun shot wound to the head. She is truely one of most genuinely nice and positive people I have ever met. She has three sons, one of whom has cerebral palsy who really need her. I didn’t know her all that well and I haven’t seen her or her husband in years but I’m still in shock. Damn.
Oh my god. I saw this thread earlier today, but I only just heard from my roommate that it was near here.
Took me awhile to find it…I think the original thread was lost in the Winter of Discontent.
flight is the doper, and he mentions it in this thread.
Recently it seems he was asking about info relating to it in this thread.
I’ll post there to see if he’ll swing by here and give the details.
-Tcat
Thanks for the email Tomcat. Here is the Wikipedia page on it. One thing I learned from this is that media reports make a base effort to get things right, but don’t stress over it too much, particularly in the immediate aftermath. Then later reports will use the earlier reports as reference and perpetuate the errors. I had a discussion or two with reporters about this and they only said, “Well, my editor was satisfied that it was accurate.”
Thus I tend to be very skeptical of reports on incidents like this, especially on details and motivation. It is odd to see Dopers picking apart the details and subtle shades of meaning in the words chosen for an article when they are lucky if the basic facts are right.
Anyway, the Wikipedia article is spot on and brief. I cannot think of any other female shooters off the top of my head.
It turns out that that insane woman killed one of her former neighbors at her condo before she went to the post office on her rampage. There are now six dead plus the shooter. Charlotte is still hanging on.
Glad to hear she is still making it. Were you close?
What is it with postal workers, anyway? The article in the paper this morning echoed hajario’s comment that
I confess I laughed when I read it - just like I laughed when I read in a travel guide that some African country was safe to visit because “no busloads of tourists have disappeared since 1989” or something.
Why postal workers? Has this question been addressed here before?
It was just reported that Charlotte didn’t make it. We weren’t close. I worked closely with her husband Jim in 1999-2000 and hadn’t seen either one of them in five years. As I said earlier, she was just a lovely person. I never saw her without a smile on her face. This sounds so trite but it’s totally true.
Jim used to work for the postal system and that’s where he and Charlotte met. He hated it and that’s what made him go back to school to become an engineer. He told me that “company culture” was awful there and that the managers were tyrants. I don’t remember any details but he said that the micromanagment was extreme and the employees were under tremendous stress to meet certain numbers. After the well publicized shootings started to happen, things were significantly changed and it became a much more pleasant place to wolrk