CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : SAN DIEGO : Deaths Spur Hearing on Postal Service

Congressmen looking into problems in the U.S. Postal Service will conduct a hearing next month in San Diego where several postal employees have killed themselves and others in the past year, Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) said. Bates sent a letter last summer to the General Accounting Office, calling for a probe of the management practices of the U.S. Postal Service. The letter followed the Aug. 10 shooting rampage of John M. Taylor, an Escondido postal worker who killed his wife and two co-workers before fatally shooting himself. Prior to the rampage, four other county postal workers had committed suicide in 1989. Co-workers had said that the deaths were related to job stress, but postal officials blamed them on the employees’ personal problems.