Accused Workplace Killer Offers His Side : Courts: Painter testifies he felt harassed before shooting spree that left 1 dead, 2 hurt at Fairview Development Center.

In defense questioning that at times sounded more like cross-examination, accused murderer Michael Rahming gave his account Tuesday of his troubled work history at Fairview Development Center, which he claims led to a 1991 shooting spree in which one man was killed and two others wounded.

“You are supposed to be my defense attorney,” the 35-year-old former painter said to his attorney, Michael J. Naughton, after some sharp questioning. “Why are you trying to upset me in front of the jury?”

Complaining that his attorney’s questions were “irrelevant,” Rahming asked: “Can we stick with the issue here? Are you trying to mix me up, or what?”

“I do the issues,” Naughton snapped back. “You do the answers.”

Rahming, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, complained that supervisors and co-workers at the center for the developmentally disabled discriminated against him because he is African-American. A long series of disputes led to his threats to quit and the actual filing of several formal complaints of harassment against supervisors.

Prosecutors charge that on the day of the July 30, 1991, shooting spree, Rahming opened fire in a coffee break room, wounding his supervisor, James H. Pichon, 38. He then allegedly chased another supervisor, Allen R. Motis, 53, into his office, before shooting and killing him.

Rahming then allegedly tried to shoot at Michael Softa, but the gun misfired. Police say Rahming then drove his truck about a mile to the office of Hugh Kohler, 45, who was shot and wounded.

Problems began almost at the outset of his employment at Fairview, Rahming testified.

“They would do things to agitate me,” he said of co-workers. “They did things to provoke me,” like bumping him, stepping on his feet or blocking a doorway when he was about to enter. Rahming’s locker was moved and his paint was tampered with, he said.

But part of the responsibility for the situation was his own, Rahming admitted. “Maybe because of my mouth,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have talked back. . . . I should have been more humble, maybe.”

Over time, Rahming said, “I felt I had enemies,” and he accepted assignments where he worked alone. “If we didn’t have any contact, they wouldn’t have any cause to dislike me,” he explained.

The dead man, Motis, “was not the main character, not even the second character” he had grievances against, Rahming said.

Rahming said he brought the handguns to work the day of the shooting “to make me feel secure. Yes, I needed some protection.”

Asked why he shot his co-workers, Rahming responded that “I can’t explain it. It was just something that happened. Something just blew up like a bomb on the inside.”

“Something came over me that I cannot understand,” he added.

The Long Beach man was apprehended about an hour after the shooting spree when he surrendered without incident to a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who had been sent to check his residence.

Rahming said he turned himself in peacefully, because “I’m a decent human being that realized I did something wrong. . . . I am spiritual. . . . That’s why I can’t believe what happened.”

Naughton made clear in brief opening statements Monday that Rahming’s sanity would be the focus of the case. “Mr. Rahming was not simply a disgruntled employee (who) decided to take matters into his own hands. That was not the case,” Naughton told jurors.

The findings of psychiatrists who had examined the paint crew worker in the year before the shooting, Naughton said, would depict Rahming as an increasingly desperate paranoid personality who showed clear signs of dangerous behavior.

“We present three different mental health professionals who examined Mr. Rahming and found significant indications of a paranoid personality disorder,” Naughton said.

“He didn’t know right from wrong that day,” the attorney said. “In layman’s terms, at the time (of the shooting) he was crazy. . . . He was insane legally at the time he did all this.”

On Tuesday, several supervisors and administrators described conflicts and conversations with Rahming during his employment. Larry Heads, an affirmative action officer at Fairview, testified that Rahming’s discrimination complaints were not upheld, but two complaints of retaliation he lodged were found to be valid.

Anne-Marie Schnetzeler, a retired Fairview administrator, said she saw a gradual escalation of anger and hostility from Rahming as the months following his discrimination complaint did not lead to support for his charges.

Schnetzeler was among the handful of Fairview officials whom Rahming sought out in his attempt to have his charges of discrimination investigated and substantiated.

Schnetzeler described meetings she attended in which administrators listened to a frustrated Rahming in a series of increasingly tense and belligerent conversations. While Rahming could be polite and even charming, she said, several of the conferences turned into arguments.

Once, according to Schnetzeler, Rahming said “I might get a knife and cut somebody up,” while another encounter ended with him resignedly saying he could trust no one because he “was a black man in a white man’s world,” she testified.

Schnetzeler said Rahming’s verbal abuse and occasional threats never seemed to be the ravings of a man out of control. But she took one of his threats seriously enough, however, to make an unannounced move to a vacant office for three days, a measure she attributed to “safety concerns.”