Woman Shoots Self at Workers’ Comp Court : Safety: No one else is hurt, but Santa Monica incident prompts calls for tighter security at sites of hearings on disability and unemployment claims.

A woman apparently distraught over her disability case shot herself in the head Thursday during a meeting with a workers’ compensation judge in Santa Monica, authorities said.

The woman, identified as 37-year-old Jhoy Geronimo of Hawthorne, was reported in good condition Thursday at Saint Johns Hospital in Santa Monica. No one else was hurt in the midmorning incident at the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board court.

The shooting prompted calls for tighter security at public places such as the workers’ compensation court, which, according to Presiding Judge Franklin Kaye, has no regular guards and is only occasionally patrolled by state police.

“This thing is recurring and one of these days somebody’s going to kill one or more of the judges or the secretaries or God knows who else,” said Chris Voight, spokesman for the Assn. of California State Attorneys and Administrative Law Judges, whose members include the state’s 130 workers’ compensation judges and other hearing officers.

The Santa Monica incident came only a month after an out-of-work computer engineer killed three people during a shooting rampage in an Oxnard unemployment office. After the Oxnard shootings, state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) announced that he would draft legislation aimed at improving security in public buildings statewide.

In 1991, a workers’ compensation judge in Los Angeles disarmed a man who held a gun to the head of an insurance company lawyer before his hearing was to start. The .22-caliber pistol turned out not to be loaded.

Police said Geronimo, representing herself in a 2-year-old psychiatric disability claim against a medical rehabilitation company, pulled a .22-caliber handgun from her pocket during a conference in the office of state workers’ compensation Judge William Ordas.

“She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and put it to her head. The next thing everybody heard was a gunshot,” said Santa Monica Police Sgt. Gary Gallinot. He said the single bullet Geronimo fired did not appear to have penetrated her skull.

Martha J. Shaw, an attorney for the insurance company resisting Geronimo’s claim, brought a bodyguard to the conference because of past threats by the Hawthorne woman, according to a spokesman for the law firm, Tobin Lucks & Goldman of Thousand Oaks.

Kaye said officials are now considering increasing security at the workers’ compensation court. State police are called to the building an average of once every two weeks for cases in which officials fear an appellant may become violent, he said.

The court--with 10 judges and about 50 other employees--consists of 10 courtrooms and offices rented in an office building near Santa Monica Municipal Airport. About 300 people pass through the office each day, Kaye said.

The judges’ association is calling for metal detectors and armed guards at all court and hearing locations, many of which have unsecured entrances, Voight said.

The association is most worried about the potential for violence at workers’ compensation and unemployment offices because appellants can become angry or desperate after being out of work for months while cases are handled, he said.