A man who shot four people, killing two, at a utility office east of Los Angeles before turning the gun on himself was a 48-year-old company employee from Southern California, authorities said Saturday.
Investigators identified the shooter as Andre Turner of Norco in Riverside County and ruled that his death was a suicide, Los Angeles County coroner's Lt. Larry Dietz told the Associated Press.
The two other men killed were Henry Serrano, 56, of Walnut and Robert Lindsay, 53, of Chino, Dietz said.
Two other shooting victims, a man and a woman whose names were not released, were in critical condition at a hospital, the Sheriff's Department said in a statement.
All five people worked for Southern California Edison in the same area of the same building at an office park in Irwindale, a small industrial city east of Los Angeles, authorities said. Authorities have released no information on a possible motive.
A phone number listed in Turner's name rang unanswered Saturday morning.
Horrified employees barricaded themselves behind locked doors and hid under desks Friday afternoon as Turner walked through the office firing a semi-automatic handgun, authorities said.
The complex is surrounded by a fence and patrolled by a security guard. Employees need a security card to get into the building, said Gil Alexander, a spokesman for Southern California Edison. About 230 employees work in the building where the shooting took place, and about 1,100 employees work in the complex.
The utility's office is in a complex of buildings that also includes a business called California Lighting Sales.
Cindy Gutierrez, the controller for that company, said employees there didn't hear gunshots and didn't realize anything was amiss until building management announced over the intercom that everyone should stay indoors.
Two nearby schools were locked for about two hours after the shooting and no one on the campuses was hurt.
Irwindale is a city of about 1,400 residents in the San Gabriel Valley, 22 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. It is home to the Irwindale Speedway auto racetrack and large rock and gravel quarries.
Southern California Edison is one of its largest companies, employing 2,100 people.
Irwindale, California -- The gunman who killed at least two people and then himself in an office building in southern California is a 48-year-old man from the nearby town of Norco, authorities said Saturday.
He was identified as Andre Turner.
Those slain Friday were Henry Serrano, 56, of Walnut, California; and Robert Lindsay, 53, of Chino, California, the Los Angeles County coroner's office said.
The building is occupied by Southern California Edison, one of the nation's largest electric utilities, serving almost 14 million people, according to a company statement.
The victims were employees from Southern California Edison, but utility officials didn't provide further details, including whether the gunman was an employee.
According to police, Turner, an Edison employee, shot four of his co-workers, killing two of them and wounding two others. Officials say Turner then turned the gun on himself and took his own life.
The two victims who were killed were identified as 57-year-old Henry Serrano of Walnut and 53-year-old Robert Lindsay of Chino.
The two others injured in the shooting, a man and a woman, were hospitalized in critical condition. Their identities were not released.
The shooting broke out at Edison's No. 3 building on the 4900 block of Rivergrade Road at about 1:30 p.m. Friday.
Olive Junior High School and Walnut Elementary School in the Baldwin Park Unified School District were placed on locked down for some time following the shooting.
SWAT and emergency response teams surrounded the building as employees say they had to barricade themselves inside conference rooms and break rooms.
Many contacted family members using cellphones, and loved ones say they just tried to keep them calm.
"I just was telling her, just do what she has to do to survive and be safe," said Ron Orona, whose daughter works in the building.
Monica Salazar said her mother, a 30-year Edison employee, was inside the building at the time of the shooting. Her mother communicated through text message, saying a group of them had locked themselves in a conference room.
As Salazar was being interviewed by Eyewitness News, she was reunited with her mother.
Edison is calling the shooting one of the worst days in the company's 125-year history. The utility will be offering funds and grief counseling for employees and the families of the victims.
Detectives are working to determine the motive behind the shooting. Authorities say they plan on searching Turner's home and looking at surveillance footage from inside the building at the time of the shooting.
A downstate woman said Saturday she saw her neighbor shoot at her 10-month-old baby before apparently killing herself.
Authorities have said five people, including two children and a baby, were killed in a murder-suicide, but they haven’t identified the shooter. The bodies were found Friday in Emington, a small farming community about 80 miles southwest of Chicago.
Neighbor Annelise Fiedler told The Associated Press that she heard a round of shots Friday afternoon and ran outside to her backyard.
She saw 30-year-old Sara McMeen in the next yard over hovering over her baby as if she’d dropped her. Fiedler asked McMeen if everything was alright, and “she looked at me and said, ‘No, everything is not alright.”
McMeen fired a shot at the infant, “and then I just ran,” said Fiedler, a town trustee. Fiedler said she didn’t see or hear what happened after that, and she didn’t see any of the other victims.
Along with McMeen, Livingston County coroner Michael Burke identified them as 29-year-old Daniel Warren, 8-year-old Skyler Lemke, 7-year-old Ian Lemke and 10-month-old Maggie Warren.
Town officials said the baby and another child were found with the woman in the backyard of the home in the 100 block of South Street. A boy and the man were found elsewhere.
Squad cars from at least three jurisdictions lined the short, curbless street of the crime scene with sheriff's deputies blocking the street Friday night.
A woman who answered the cellphone of a man believed to be the surviving father of two of the slain children said: "We're all in shock — my son called me to go check on my grandkids. I'm sorry, I can't talk anymore."
"They're all gone, all gone," said Debbie Delaney, Emington's secretary and treasurer. Her husband is mayor of Emington and her son is one of the firefighters called to the scene, she said.
Neighbors said the family had moved into the small home near the town's park late in the summer and had kept to themselves.
"They didn't seem to want to neighbor," said Darlene Lithgow. "The kids were nice. They would come by and talk to me."
"We've never experienced anything like this," said Bob Young, a retired school administrator and Livingston County board member who lives in town. "(The feeling) is one of shock I guess, wondering what could we have done."
The town has a grain elevator, a church, a post office that may soon be closed, a park and a dog-grooming business. For the older men, there's a coffee klatch that meets at the grain elevator; for youth there's the Emington Hot Shots 4-H club. Young said the slain kids were not in the club.
Over the last 20 years, Young said, the town has gone from being a "real stable" community to one whose low cost of living attracts a more transient population from the northern part of the state. But he said the worst calls county police typically handle there are domestic disputes and teenage pranks.
Young said he had seen the slain children playing on the park's swings and slides.
"They seemed happy and well provided for," he said.
The two older children who were killed were students in the first and third grades at the elementary school in Saunemin, a town south of Emington, Young said.
The school superintendent told him they were now on Christmas break but would be making counselors available, Young said.
Some unsettled residents came during the day to the United Church of Christ, where Young is moderator. He didn't lock it up until after 7 p.m.
Detroit — Despite the fact that her former employer fired her at a highly publicized meeting, Turkia Mullin wouldn't mind the chance to resume her job as chief executive of Detroit Metro Airport, her attorney said Thursday.
Mullin filed a lawsuit Thursday charging that the Wayne County Airport Authority board held an illegal meeting Oct. 31 when it voted to dump her. Mullin wants a Wayne Circuit judge to toss the results of that meeting and grant her back pay.
Attorney Ray Sterling said she'd even be willing to return to the airport.
"(Board member) Sam Nouhan and many others said she did a great job in her two months at the airport," Ray Sterling said in an email to The News. "She wanted to continue her mission then, and she would welcome the opportunity to continue it now."
Airport officials declined to discuss the specifics of the lawsuit. "We can't comment on the lawsuit since we haven't been served with it yet," said Scott Wintner, airport spokesman.
Mullin alleges the airport board wrongly refused her attorney's request to have an open discussion of her employment at the meeting and that the board did not properly notify the public about the meeting.
She is seeking to have the board's decision invalidated and, if nothing else, to have a new meeting in public; the board had talked with its attorney in private before it voted. Sterling had unsuccessfully sought to have that portion of the meeting be public.
The email was dated before the airport board met to nominate its CEO, violating the requirement that decisions be made before the public.
Airport Board Chair Renee Axt, who has resigned since the FBI began investigating Mullin’s hiring, selected the three person search committee from airport board members.
That committee was made up of Sam Nouhan, whose law firm was contracted for $1 million of work for Wayne County, Charlie Williams, who mediated the sale of Greektown Casino’s parking garage, earning $420,000, and Sue Hall, who is employed by the Wayne County Sheriff's Department.
Nouhan, Hall and Williams would decide who would be Metro Airport’s director.
Another email obtained by Marlinga showed that the group had withheld Mullin’s name from a report to Delta Airlines, Metro Airport's largest carrier.
Board member Nouhan wrote in the email that Delta is qualified to critique candidates with airport experience, but that it is not in regards to non-airport candidates, such as Mullin.
"That is why I didn’t reveal (Mullin’s) identity," Nouhan wrote.
Marlinga said that he believes withholding Mullin’s name is another deliberate attempt to hide the board's fait accompli selection of the ex-CEO.
On Friday, a judge will decide the legality of Mullin’s hiring. If in violation of Michigan’s open meetings law, her contract and the $750,000 severance salary granted to her would be nullified.
FORT WAYNE, Ind. - Students at East Allen County Schools will be able to earn college credits while earning their high school diploma. At a meeting Tuesday, board members voted to move forward with a plan to partner with Vincennes University.
“East Allen University will be a highly-focus ed high school program where students can earn an Indiana Core 40 high school diploma while also earning college credits toward an Associate Degree from Vincennes University," said Superintendent Dr. Karyle Green. "The program will include internships with business partners, project based learning, and inquiry learning. One of the key concepts of the school will be a personalized school environment promoting the inclusion and belonging of all students leading to high academic achievement through enhanced support structures."
District leaders said they've been working since early summer to design an innovative 9-12 program to go into the closed Paul Harding High School space. The school is scheduled to open in August with approximately 60-100 freshmen and grow to approximately 350-425 students over the next four years.
Students can earn an Indiana Core-40 high school diploma and earn 62 credits towards a degree at Vincennes. Sixty-two credits are enough for an Associate Degree. The early college program will include internships, project-based learning, and 21st-century skills, with curriculum heavily based on math, science and language arts.
“Until a student is sophomore and above, they're just getting their basic "General Studies" as you might say, for their high school opportunities. And to get into the college courses, they have to pass what is called the "Accu-Placer,” said Dr. Karyle Green, Superintendent of East Allen County Schools. “So we anticipate having that full program of studies completed and designed by the end of calendar year 2012.”
According to Vincennes, research shows that 86 percent of high school graduates pursue higher education in early college programs.
“One of the priorities of early college to is address those students who are either first generation, or not highly represented in college because of poverty levels or economic levels. So we really focused on those who would be first generation or would struggle to find a way to get to college,” Dr. Green said.
Dr. Green said EACS University will open at Harding in August. Current 8th grade students, within EACS district, and outside, are invited to attend informational meetings with their parents in January to learn more.
