Survivors Seek More Security at State Offices : Violence: Colleagues of workers killed in a shooting rampage in Oxnard demand police protection and metal detectors. State Sen. Torres says he will put their requests in a bill next month.

Survivors of a shooting rampage at an unemployment office met with a lawmaker Sunday to demand more security, and tearfully recounted what happened in the Dec. 2 shooting that left three colleagues dead.

“I hear his footsteps and I think I’m next,” said an Oxnard unemployment office worker who declined to give her name. “I lay there very still and he continues shooting, shooting, shooting.”

Out-of-work computer engineer Alan Winterbourne killed three people and wounded four others at the office. He later killed an Oxnard police detective before being shot to death by officers outside a Ventura unemployment office. Witnesses said Winterbourne had singled out employees, deliberately bypassing clients seeking unemployment benefits.

State Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) organized the Sunday meeting in an Oxnard restaurant to solicit ideas and suggestions about how to provide safety measures at state offices.

Private security patrols have been assigned to the Oxnard and Ventura offices, but several workers at the Oxnard office, which is set to open this morning for the first time since the killings, want state police. Some told Torres that they also want metal detectors at each entrance, bulletproof glass above countertops, and steel doors instead of glass ones.

“We don’t get combat pay,” said Mary Ramirez, a state employee who was in the Oxnard office when Winterbourne began firing. “We need every single office separated (from the public), so that no one can get into the work areas.”

Eight days before the shooting, state officials had received a request from the Oxnard office asking for better security.

Mary Helen Torres, program director at the Ventura office, said: “It’s not just the employees who are being traumatized. The public is being traumatized too. Some of these claimants are scared to death.”

David Flores, whose sister, Darlene Provencio, was wounded in the attack, suggested that a “panic button” be installed so employees could alert authorities in emergencies.

“We know we’re dealing with a public that is hostile,” Flores said. “There doesn’t seem to be any contingency plan.”

Torres, a member of the Senate’s criminal justice committee, said he will include the employees’ requests in a bill he plans to introduce next month. He also said his bill will seek stricter penalties for those convicted of violent assaults at state offices.

Torres said he will ask his colleagues to approve funding for armed guards at every office of the Employment Development Department and the Department of Motor Vehicles, which could be funded by the half-cent sales tax extension approved by voters last month.

“People should not fear for their lives to get a driver’s license,” Torres said.