Review of Security Set After Hospital Killing

As two supervisors at Fairview Developmental Center were released from a hospital Wednesday after treatment for bullet wounds, officials vowed to review security procedures at the state hospital.

Fairview officials said they do not believe the shootings, allegedly by an alienated employee, could have been prevented. But some employees were skeptical of that claim.

“It’s a known fact it was coming,” Ken Hawkins, 49, a painting supervisor, said of the rampage, which took the life of a facilities supervisor and injured two other people, including the hospital’s top administrator. Hawkins, an immediate supervisor of murder suspect Michael Rahming, was away at the time of the incident. He said he was angry with administrators for ignoring two years of tensions in his division.

Rahming, 37, of Long Beach, is scheduled for arraignment on charges of murder and attempted murder this morning in Orange County Municipal Court in Newport Beach.

Hawkins considered himself lucky to be alive.

“I ain’t got no holes in me,” he said at work Wednesday. “If I’d have been in the shop, he’d have wanted me.”

Police allege that Rahming, a painter at the hospital since 1988, shot three supervisors with a .32-caliber revolver. Two were shot as they sat with other men around a table in the break room and the third was wounded near his office on another part of the sprawling facility.

Killed was Allen Motis, 53, of Garden Grove, a 28-year employee of the hospital who was the building trades supervisor. James Pichon, 36, of El Toro, and administrator Hugh Kohler, 43, of Costa Mesa, were each shot once in the head. Both men were released from UC Irvine Medical Center on Wednesday.

Rahming was arrested quietly at his Long Beach home Tuesday about an hour after the shootings. Shortly before his arrest, he called his father, Rudy Rahming, 55, who works at a grocery in the Miami area and had not spoken with his son in years.

“He was talking fast and I knew something terrible had happened,” Rudy Rahming said. “I knew he was in some kind of trouble. He told me the police were coming for him and I told him not to hassle the police and go with them. It’s hard to believe that he would do something like that.”

Officials and friends say Rahming had been unhappy over a series of run-ins with his bosses and claimed, in grievances filed with the center and through his union, that he was harassed and suffered discrimination because is black. He said disciplinary action against him--such as docking his pay--was based on racism.

Mental health professionals from the hospital and the state, speaking at a news conference at Fairview, said the shootings was an unpredictable tragedy-- a reflection of a societal problem, rather than a lapse in hospital oversight of employees and their grievances.

But union officials familiar with working conditions at Fairview said plant operations--where Rahming worked--is known as a problem area that has spawned complaints about discrimination for years.

“If anyone is saying there is no racial discrimination out there, that’s a bunch of hooey,” said Rick Funderberg, a representative for the International Assn. of Operating Engineers, the union to which Rahming, belonge.

State welfare officials denied that there is widespread discrimination.

Center officials, concerned about what they termed Rahming’s erratic behavior, had him take a psychiatric diagnostic examination last summer. Despite findings that indicated Rahming had the potential for violence, he was allowed to continue at work, according to facility records.

Officials said Wednesday that despite those reports there was never enough evidence to justify firing Rahming.