New Hampshire Workplace Violence
Posted by Tamara
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the number of homicides in the workplace is declining, however the awareness of the problem is growing as a result of increased media coverage. In 2006, the BLS reports that 754 individuals were murdered on the job site, a decline of 5% over the previous year.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has identified several warning signs for impending workplace violence. In last year’s massacre on the Virginia Tech campus, the assailant had displayed several of these signs prior to the incident. Seung-Hui Cho was intensely interested in guns and other weapons. He had a history of mental disorders but was not under any treatment at the time of the attack. He had difficulty with relationships, and was very jealous of women with whom he had only a casual acquaintance. He had displayed obsessive behavior towards women in the past.
Even though New Hampshire has not been the scene of the most recent occurrences of workplace violence, employers in the state need to be conscious of the potential for assaults and violent acts resulting in death on the job site.
On the morning of April 16, 2007 Cho first went to a dorm room and killed two individuals. For the next several hours, his whereabouts is somewhat unclear, but later in the day he would kill again. He entered a campus building, chained the doors shut and began to kill. He was reported to have brought “enough ammo to start a war”. When the shooting was over, he had murdered 32 people and wounded another 17, before turning the gun on himself. It was only later that he was connected to the 2 murders in the dorm room.
Domestic violence often spills over into the workplace. A waitress at a Denny’s restaurant was killed by her estranged husband in one such incident. The homicide occurred in Orlando, Florida not far from Walt Disney World. Vacationers watched as the waitress was stabbed, some tried to stop the killer and another called paramedics. The assailant was chased away by some of the onlookers. The woman died from her injuries.
The accounts could go on and on. The times, places and circumstances vary, but many times the root causes are the same. Often there are warning signs which can help prevent such tragedies.
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