Gunman Kills 3, Self at Plant in Santa Fe Springs

A worker fired by a Santa Fe Springs electronics company killed three former co-workers and wounded two others Monday before fatally shooting himself, authorities said.

Panic-stricken workers of Extron Electronics dropped to the floor or ran screaming from the building as the gunman yelled, “Get down!” in Vietnamese and began firing, investigators said.

The gunman--identified late Monday night as Tuan Nguyen, 29, of Huntington Beach--raced from one side of the plant to the other, killing two men and a woman, said Fidel Gonzales, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

Nguyen, who had been dismissed last month for “unsatisfactory performance,” then turned his .38-caliber pistol on himself, Gonzales said.

Authorities identified the three dead employees as Thu Theresa Pham of Santa Ana, Son (Sonny) Van Truong of Pomona and Chin Van Nguyen, 27, who also goes by the name Christopher Arthur Nuell, of Garden Grove. Authorities said the two Nguyens apparently were not related.

The manufacturing plant, at 13540 Larwin Circle, produces video interfaces--devices that connect computers to video screens. Access to the building is controlled by door locks that can be opened only by punching a secret five-digit code.

Officials of Extron initially expressed puzzlement over the motive for the rampage, denying that the gunman had ever worked for them. And they had said they were uncertain how an intruder could have entered the building.

But investigators learned that Nguyen was fired 2 1/2 weeks ago after working at Extron for less than three months, Gonzales said. He had apparently expressed no anger at the time he was fired, Gonzales added.

The drama began shortly after 1 p.m. when Nguyen jumped out of his car and hurried into the plant. Witnesses said he left his older-model Nissan in the middle of the parking lot with its engine running.

Nguyen ran into an equipment test area in the northeast corner of the plant and shot one man twice in the head. He then raced into an assembly area at the northwest corner and fatally wounded another man, witnesses said.

He then ran to the southwest side of the building where he gunned down the woman and then shot himself in the head. Deputies said he was still clutching the pistol when they found his body.

Employees of a nearby business said they heard four or five shots before doors to the plant flew open and 50 Extron workers scrambled out, knocking over chairs and equipment as they fled.

The two wounded victims escaped with their co-workers. One of them, Ygoc Hoa Pham, 26 was listed in stable condition at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center with a bullet wound in his buttocks. The other, Hai Thi Tran, was reportedly shot in the upper right arm and right hand. She was treated and released from Norwalk Community Hospital.

Fleeing workers said the gunman may have stopped to reload his pistol at least once during the bloody rampage.

One of them, Sebastian Anthony, said he ducked under a workbench as the first victim was gunned down. That man was taken by helicopter to the Norwalk hospital, where he died, according to deputies.

Co-worker Yara Godoy, 22, of La Mirada said Nguyen entered a rear door to the plant as she walked behind him. She said he was wearing a baseball cap and blue jeans and resembled another worker, so she had no reason for concern.

“He looked like he knew the security code,” she said. “He looked like he knew what he was doing.”

But Godoy said she immediately heard three popping sounds when the man disappeared inside. Before she could punch in the door’s entry codes herself, it burst open and co-workers ran out, screaming to her to run for her life.

“So I did,” Godoy said.

The rampage stunned other workers in the tidy business park. Hours after the shooting, a parking lot shared by employees of several firms remained cordoned off by sheriff’s deputies.

Extron, a 7-year-old company, is one of a dozen companies in the 20-year-old manufacturing complex.

Santa Fe Springs, about 12 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, is mostly a patchwork of industrial parks and heavy industry left over from an oil boom that began about 70 years ago. The city has 16,000 residents, but the population swells to more than 90,000 during the workday as employees arrive at more than 3,500 businesses.

Monday’s shootings sent shock through the city. Curious onlookers--including children on bicycles--flooded to the scene.

Officials likened Monday’s incident to one in the city last year, when a disgruntled county employee barged into a children’s services office and shot her former supervisor in the face. No one died in that shooting.

Acts of violence by disgruntled current or former employees have been increasing since the mid-1980s, said Joseph A. Kinney, executive director of the National Safe Workplace Institute in Chicago.

Kinney said such acts were virtually unheard of until August, 1986, when the first of a nationwide series of deadly post office shootings occurred in Edmund, Okla.

By Kinney’s count, about 100 people across the country were murdered last year by disgruntled workers, up from about 70 the year before.

Kinney, co-author of a study of 125 workplace murders, said these acts of violence are especially common in California. He attributed that in part to the severity of California’s recession.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health reported last year that 7,603 Americans were victims of homicide on the job during the 1980s. The most common victims were taxi drivers, police officers and retail workers, particularly those working alone and at night.

Separately, the California Department of Industrial Relations’ latest figures show that homicides accounted for a quarter of the 551 work-related deaths in the state in 1992.

Times correspondent Psyche Pascual and staff writers Howard Blume, Lily Dizon, Carla Hall and Stuart Silverstein contributed to this story.

Office Slayings

A gunman opened fire in an electronics company’s office Monday in Santa Fe Springs, killing three people before apparently killing himself.