A Safeway employee burst into a north Denver warehouse Sunday, gunning down five co-workers – one fatally – and injuring a police officer before dying in a firefight with police who stormed the building.
The gunman, whose identity was not disclosed, died about two hours after entering a massive distribution facility for the grocery chain during a quiet midafternoon shift, spraying bullets and apparently igniting fires that sent employees racing for cover.
He is believed to have targeted a supervisor in the rampage, said Safeway employee Scott Stroman, who was working in another part of the building after only two weeks on the job.
“It was just a normal day when all of a sudden everyone was running out of the building,” Stroman said. “I heard faint gunshots. People were hiding behind anything they could find and also running from the building.”
Even as fires spread in different sections of the building, most of the 152 employees working the Sunday shift escaped harm. Fire Chief Larry Trujillo and police indicated that the gunman somehow triggered blazes but declined to say how or to describe his weaponry.
After ambulances arrived, victims were raced to Denver Health Medical Center. Two were listed in critical condition, with another classified as serious and another fair. One was released after being treated. Hospital officials, citing privacy concerns, declined to disclose the patients’ names.
The injured police officer, identified as SWAT team member Derick Dominguez, is expected to recover from wounds to the hip and leg.
Denver Manager of Safety Al LaCabe said the officer was scheduled for surgery and was to remain hospitalized overnight.
“He’s conscious; he’s talking to his family,” LaCabe said. “And it looks like he’s going to be OK.”
Meanwhile, dozens of frantic relatives of the wounded gathered at the hospital’s emergency room to learn the fate of their loved ones. The victims’ injuries included bullet wounds to the mouth and the torso.
“The bullet grazed him,” said Megan Moran, describing injuries to her father, 35-year-old Safe way employee Mark Moran.
Still, other family members called his condition critical. Moran has worked at the facility for six years.
“It’s traumatic, very traumatic for all involved,” said Moran’s sister, Anna Moran. “Our thoughts are out there for all the victims and their families. We’re just praying for everyone.”
Another wounded employee sustained a bullet wound to the mouth and underwent at least two hours of reconstructive surgery with almost 40 relatives huddled at the hospital waiting for news.
“It’s a pretty tight family,” said one of his relatives, who wouldn’t give a name. “We’re hoping for the best.”
Denver Health emergency-room physician Maria Moreira said her crew was prepared for a large number of wounded.
“We really didn’t know what we were going to see. We had the blood bank ready to go. It’s going to depend on the next 24 to 48 hours” whether the critically injured victims pull through, she said.
Quick response
The first reports of a shooting came via multiple 911 calls from inside the Safeway facility at Dahlia and Stapleton Drive at 3:12 p.m., Police Chief Gerry Whitman said. The first officers arrived at the scene about four minutes later. By 3:24 p.m., they charged into the warehouse.
Soon, a SWAT team arrived. As they swept through the 1.3 million-square- foot building, they found four shooting victims with various injuries. They also discovered a fatally wounded worker.
The teams of officers eventually confronted the gunman in a volley of shots that led to his death shortly after 4 p.m. Police spokesman Sonny Jackson could not immediately confirm whether officers killed the suspect or the gunman turned his weapon on himself.
“We are trained to go in. I don’t think you could hold the cops back in something like this,” Whitman said of the raid. “It was coordinated very well. He shot at us, and we shot at him. I don’t expect (officers) to negotiate when you get shot at.”
Forty-five firefighters scrambled to the scene to contain the fires, but the warehouse’s sprinkler system successfully doused much of the flames. To contain the scene, Interstate 70 was closed in both directions and didn’t reopen until 6:50 p.m.
“It’s like Columbine”
Employee Gavino Lucero was sitting with a group of five other workers and a nurse in the center’s wellness center when, he said, they were confronted by police with their guns drawn.
“We’re shaken up,” he said. “It’s like Columbine.”
Whitman credited police and public- safety officers with a methodical response that preserved lives.
“There were 150 people in there we had to protect, and he was already shooting at people,” Whitman said. “We have busloads of witnesses.”
Safeway spokesmen said they have contacted grief counselors for employees experiencing trauma. Employees seeking help can call 303-320-8914.
Although authorities declined to identify the gunman, they acknowledged that one suspect, whose name was publicly aired over police scanners, was hired Feb. 15, 2005, and worked in the produce warehouse, where much of the shooting took place. That employee assembled produce loads for individual Safeway stores.
Stroman said he did not see the shooting directly but had heard accounts of what happened from other workers. He said the employee just walked up to his supervisor and “shot him.”
“At that point, he started shooting everybody who was around. … All the bosses are really nice,” he said. “He’s just unstable, I guess.”
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-820-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
Previous workplace shootings
Dec. 26, 2000: Software engineer Michael McDermott, 42, kills seven co-workers at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield, Mass.
Feb. 5, 2001: Former employee William Baker, 66, kills four people, then himself, at a Melrose Park, Ill., engine plant.
July 8, 2003: Doug Williams, 48, shoots 14 co-workers, killing six, before committing suicide at a Lockheed Martin plant in Meridian, Miss.
Aug. 27, 2003: Salvador Tapia, 36, goes to the Chicago warehouse company that had fired him six months before and kills six former co-workers. He dies in a shootout with police.
July 2, 2004: Elijah Brown, 21, kills four co-workers at a Kansas City, Kan., meatpacking plant, before killing himself. A fifth co-worker dies a day later.
Jan. 30, 2006: Former postal worker Jennifer Sanmarco, 44, who had a history of mental problems, kills five people at a mail-processing plant in Goleta, Calif., before killing herself. One wounded victim later died, and a seventh was found dead in a condo complex where Sanmarco once lived.
Source: Wire reports
