No Way to Avoid Tragedy, O.C. Hospital Officials Say

Officials at Fairview Developmental Center were forced Wednesday to defend the institution against complaints of racism and slack security after a shooting spree that left a disgruntled employee’s supervisor dead and two other workers wounded.

State and local officials vowed to review security procedures at the 513-acre complex for the severely retarded in light of Tuesday’s events, which started in a paint shop break room and ended near the executive director’s office.

The suspect in the shooting, staff painter Michael E. Rahming, 37, of Long Beach, faces arraignment today in Newport Beach on charges of murder and attempted murder. For more than a year Rahming had been mired in a job dispute with superiors over his mental stability and his complaints of racism and harassment.

The injured managers, including executive director Hugh Kohler, were released from the hospital Wednesday with head wounds that doctors described as superficial.

Fairview officials insisted that nothing could have been done to prevent the incident and that there were no problems of racial discrimination in the department where Rahming worked.

“We feel we’re doing a fine piece of work in that area and that this is a case involving a single individual who thought he had a problem,” said Lou Sarrao, acting director of Fairview in Kohler’s absence.

Nonetheless, union representatives for some of the hospital’s employees raised new allegations that Fairview administrators have failed to respond adequately to persistent complaints of harassment and discrimination among the 1,600-person staff.

“We have tried to talk to the state about the lack of management,” said Rick Funderberg, a representative for the International Assn. of Operating Engineers, which represents Rahming, a staff painter. “What they tell us (confidentially) is they kind of know what we’re talking about but there’s nothing they can do about it.”

Angry over the administration’s handling of employee problems was Ken Hawkins, a painting supervisor who got into running disputes with Rahming. Officials said they believe that he might have been one of the suspect’s targets, but he was out of the building during the attack.

Hawkins, 49, who considers himself lucky to be alive, said he was angered to learn through the media of Rahming’s psychiatric problems. He maintained that Fairview administrators ignored tensions in his division for two years.

“It’s a known fact it was coming,” Hawkins said as he sat at a desk, nervously folding a newspaper story about the event. “I ain’t got no holes in me. If I’d have been in the shop, he’d have wanted me. I’m still scared. Look at me--it’s not that hot out, and I’m sweating.”

Killed with three gunshots was Allen Motis, 53, of Garden Grove, a 28-year veteran employee of the hospital who was the building trades supervisor. Also wounded with a bullet to the head was James Herbert Pichon, 36, of El Toro, who was released from the UCI Medical Center in Orange on Wednesday.

Rahming then allegedly drove less than half a mile to the center’s administration building and, after a struggle, shot Kohler, 43, of Costa Mesa once in the head. He too was released from UCI Medical Center on Wednesday.

“He came home from the hospital . . . and he’s doing fine,” said Sherrie Kohler, the director’s wife. “He’s recuperating, and I don’t think we want to make any statements to the press until later.”

Doris Pichon, the mother of the other wounded man, said: “He’s going to be all right, thank God. . . . If (the bullet) would have been in just a fraction of an inch more, he would have been gone.”

Pichon might need plastic surgery for a scar on top of his head above his eye, and doctors want to watch out for dizzy spells, but he was anxious to get out of the hospital, she said.

And he is saddened by Motis’ death, she said: “He’s very down because of his boss. We didn’t want him to know, but he found out from the media. He’s really down about it--the man was like a father to him. He’s the one who helped him get ahead.”

Rahming was arrested quietly at his Long Beach home Tuesday morning about an hour after the shootings. Just before his arrest and after the shootings, he had called his father, Rudy Rahming, 55, who works at a grocery in the Miami area. The elder Rahming had not spoken to 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. He was a quiet child who did not have a lot of companions, a lot of friends. A few good friends. I wouldn’t call him a loner, he was a lot like me, a few good friends and that’s it.”

He said he wished his son had talked to him before the shootings. “I would have had some advice for him,” he said. “No hassle is worth doing what they say he did. Something terrible must have happened to make him do that.”

Meanwhile, Rahming’s grandmother, who cared for him during most of his childhood in Miami, said he had “a pretty good temper” but was generally a well-behaved child.

“This all shocked me very bad. I saw it on the television (Wednesday) morning, and I couldn’t stand it. I had to turn the television off,” said Louise Rahming, 83, of Opa-locka, Fla., near Miami.

Officials and friends say Rahming had been unhappy at Fairview over a series of run-ins with his bosses. He had claimed, in several grievances filed with the center and through his union, that he had been harassed and discriminated against because is black.

Rahming also said disciplinary action against him--such as docking his pay--had been based on racism.

Center officials, concerned about Rahming’s “erratic” behavior, had him take a psychiatric diagnostic exam last summer. Despite some findings that indicated Rahming had the potential for violence, the results were inconclusive, and he was allowed to continue working, according to facility records.

Hawkins, Rahming’s immediate supervisor, denied that the painter had been harassed at work or was treated differently from anyone else in his assignments.

“He did the same job as the average painter--and his work was impeccable,” Hawkins said. “He was a very good painter. The problem was just his attitude.”

Hawkins said Rahming frequently harangued his supervisors about discrimination and reacted bitterly when they sought to discipline him for frequent absences or tardiness.

“He told me he’d get even with me,” Hawkins said.

Fairview administrators, who reviewed Rahming’s claims of discrimination, should have done something about the tensions to avoid this week’s tragedy, Hawkins said.

“I think the powers that be should have told us that there was a problem instead of letting it go all these years,” he said.

Seth J. Kelsey, a Huntington Beach attorney who was handling Rahming’s workers’ compensation claim, said Wednesday that Fairview officials did not take his client’s complaints seriously enough.

“If you look at one of the psychiatric reports, it indicated that it was not OK to return him to his regular job, and yet they did,” Kelsey said. “He never felt working at Fairview and doing his job as a painter was stressful, it was just a certain group of supervisors and co-workers who he truly believed treated him like an outcast.”

But mental health professionals from the hospital and the state, speaking at a press conference at Fairview, said they saw the shootings as an unpredictable tragedy.

The officials characterized the case as a reflection of a social problem rather than a lapse of any sort in hospital oversight of employees and their grievances.

But Sarrao, Fairview’s acting director, said he sees “absolutely” no problem with racial relations at the clinic in general.

Times staff writers Tammerlin Drummond, David Reyes and Carla Rivera contributed to this report.