The Oxnard Rampage : Employees Say Threats Are Constant Part of Their Jobs : Oxnard: They cite high stress, worries of violence and lack of sufficient precaution--all of which play a role in working at the unemployment office.

When Alan Winterbourne walked into the unemployment office in Oxnard with a holstered .44-magnum pistol and a shotgun concealed in a box, the worst fears of employees at the office took on a terrible reality.

Oxnard police said Friday that they had no knowledge of previous threats at the state Employment Development Department in Oxnard.

But employees there told a different story--saying that threats of assault and even murder have become a constant part of their jobs.

Serious incidents such as bomb threats have cleared the building in the past year, and police routinely have to handcuff and remove irate people from the office, one employee told The Times. She requested anonymity because of fears of losing her job.

Yet few precautions have been taken, she added.

EDD officials in Sacramento confirmed Friday that their office had investigated at least three serious threats in Oxnard in the last two years. But they would not elaborate.

With little security between him and his quarry, Winterbourne had no trouble carrying out his deed Thursday.

He simply walked into the office, removed his shotgun from its box, kicked open a small half-door next to the front counter, stepped behind it and began firing at employees.

Ironically, one state unemployment official conceded, workers in the Oxnard office had told a surprised regional administrator for the EDD about the lack of security only one week earlier.

Victims of Winterbourne’s rampage said they always feared the wrath of someone who might actually carry out the threats that have become commonplace.

The widow of one of the victims, Karen Villegas, said Friday that her husband, Phillip, often spoke of the threats. He even had a plan if something went wrong.

“If something happens,” she said he told her, “I’ll just fall to the ground.”

Villegas was one of the first shot Thursday. Bonnie Smith, a co-worker wounded in the attack, said she was standing next to him. She saw him fall to the ground--mortally wounded.

Manuel Provencio, whose wife Darlene was shot in the hip by Winterbourne, said his wife’s job was filled with the stress of dealing with frustrated people searching for work.

He and a family member of another victim said threats to the office were regularly directed to the Police Department.

“It was a high-stress job,” Provencio said after seeing his wife at the hospital Thursday. “We always were afraid of something like this.”

Managers at both the Ventura and Oxnard unemployment offices have told employees not to talk to the media about security problems, workers said Friday. One Oxnard employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from supervisors, said she wanted to speak anyway.

“I’m angry,” she said, crying. “I don’t want their deaths to be in vain. Something has to be done. We were like sitting ducks.”

The woman said the atmosphere in her office became increasingly chaotic in the last three years as unemployment pushed up the number of people filing for benefits.

Other employees said workers have been punched and threatened at the counter. They added that fistfights have sometimes broken out in the crowded lines of people filing for benefits.

In one instance over the summer, they said, a man smashed his fist through the glass front door of the Oxnard office.

Employees said people become particularly hostile when they are denied benefits or extensions to existing benefits, forcing them to go on welfare. Winterbourne had been unemployed since 1986 and had long ago exhausted his benefits.

While EDD employees across the state have had run-ins with irate people, Winterbourne’s act was only the second recorded killing at an EDD office. In 1986, a disgruntled EDD employee in Garden Grove shot his supervisor before killing himself.

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Later that year, a man who was denied benefits at an EDD office in San Francisco returned toting a semiautomatic rifle and a hatchet. He tried to shoot EDD employees, but his rifle misfired, and the gun was wrestled away from him before he could reload.

Incidents of violence such as the rampage by Winterbourne have become increasingly common, said Steve Weston, special investigations supervisor for the state police in Sacramento. Weston’s office handles threats to state officials, judges and recently has started handling investigations at state agencies.

“It would be too strong to call this a trend,” Weston said. “But increasingly people who perceive a particular government agency as the source of their frustration are directing their anger at that agency, which is personified by civil servants that work there.”

Weston cited a hostage incident in Sacramento in the spring at the Board of Equalization--where the hostage taker was shot by a SWAT team--and an incident at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in February--where a patient upset with his treatment shot three doctors before being arrested--as evidence that Winterbourne’s act was no longer uncommon.

The study of what contributes to mass killings is an emerging field, said Dr. Park Deitz, a psychologist in Washington who consults with businesses worried about disgruntled employees.

“What’s going on here is a change in fashion on how to solve seemingly impossible predicaments,” Deitz said. “We’re seeing a new style of suicide designed for the media age. The fashion trend is to use multiple weapons and shoot multiple victims in one’s suicide to gain some sense of empowerment.”

Deitz said the perpetrators of such crimes have often surprising pro-social goals--feeling that their act will garner attention for an issue important to them.

Although the motives are different, office shooting sprees by disgruntled employees involve similar desires to make a statement. Deitz said he receives calls every week from companies worried that a disgruntled employee fits the description of killers they read about in the newspaper.

“Those incidents are easier to predict because they’re focused on a job site,” Deitz said. In Winterbourne’s case, although it was clear that something was wrong, it would have been hard to predict his actions, he said.

Weston agreed.

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“Our files show no prior contact with Winterbourne,” Weston said. “Unless someone’s made contact, we can’t assess a threat. Hopefully, these incidents will make state employees more aware of the risks and lead them to report threats and take precautions.”

For many EDD employees, security is now the No. 1 priority. They said they were sure that their supervisors would recognize the need for tighter security now.

“But why does the department have to wait until this happens to put security there?” asked Ingrid Aldava, a 20-year-old cousin of Anna Velasco, one of the three killed at the Oxnard EDD office.

Aldava sat with Velasco’s father, Pedro Vargas, in Velasco’s living room Friday morning. Vargas was dumbfounded that a man was able to kill his daughter so easily at a government agency.

But when he heard that there was talk of new security precautions there, he said, “it’s too late.”