Worker Kills 2 Colleagues, Wounds 4 More

A 38-year-old factory inspector, apparently upset by an argument with co-workers, went on a shooting rampage at a Santa Fe Springs plastics company Thursday, killing two colleagues and wounding four others as he calmly walked through the plant’s offices, police said.

The gunman, identified as Daniel S. Marsden of Long Beach, fled the scene in his gray Camaro. About an hour after the morning attack, he pulled up to a South-Central Los Angeles street corner and shot himself before a group of stunned onlookers, police said.

Marsden died later at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. The two dead victims were identified as Salvador Lara, 57, and Hamad Wardak, 39. Another victim, 33-year-old Lawana Bryant, was in critical condition at a Downey hospital, hospital sources said.

It was not clear what provoked Marsden--described as “strange” by some of his fellow workers--to launch his attack. Some witnesses said he reacted violently to a minor remark about his work; others said he believed co-workers were taunting him.

Survivors and witnesses of the shooting at Omni Plastics described scenes of chaos and panic as Marsden, armed with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun, began shooting his colleagues. An office, conference room and warehouse were littered with bullet casings.

“He didn’t look like he was shooting at any particular person, he just began firing,” said Cindy Mora, a 35-year-old payroll worker who hid under her desk as the shots rang out. “It was just mass hysteria. Everyone was screaming, ‘Get down! Get out of the way!’ ”

Mora called 911 and was on the phone with the operator when Marsden walked into her office. Trembling, she held her breath as he walked across the room. She could only see his feet from her hiding place. “I thought, this is it. I thought I was going to die.”

He left the room without seeing her.

In another part of the plant, one worker ran to the office intercom and yelled, “Emergency! Emergency!”--a broadcast that went out across the factory. At one point during the rampage, Marsden chased a man from an office and shot him in the parking lot, police said.

One Omni worker told witnesses he escaped only because Marsden’s gun apparently ran out of bullets. The survivor sought shelter at a neighboring company, Universal Label Printers.

“He was shaking, he was out of breath,” said Joe Ridge Jr., an employee at Universal Label.

As gunshots echoed across the industrial park, Deborah Mott, a 33-year-old employee at a neighboring company, said she saw factory workers in blue smocks running from the plant and yelling, “There’s a shooting! Call 911!”

“It was really scary,” Mott said. “It was crazy. I just couldn’t believe what was happening.”

Paramedic helicopters landed in the parking lot of the industrial complex on Jordan Circle to evacuate the wounded, who were taken to area hospitals.

Marsden, a quality assurance inspector, had been employed by Omni for about 18 months, company executives said.

The argument was a “misunderstanding,” said Joe Plourde, general manager at the family-owned company, which manufactures plastic moldings for computers and other equipment. “It was something we would take as routine, an everyday thing. He apparently interpreted it as if everybody were talking behind his back.”

After the argument, employees and witnesses said, Marsden left the warehouse, walked out to his car shortly before 10 a.m. and returned with a gun.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Plourde said. “The people he was shooting at were people you would think of as his friends.”

Whittier police spokesman Chuck Drylie said the first victim was Bryant, the 33-year-old woman, who was sitting at a computer terminal in a laboratory office. Marsden pulled out a gun--either from his waistband or a black bag he carried--and shot her point-blank.

Then Marsden shot Wardak, as he stood nearby, staring in disbelief. The gunman then made his way through the company’s conference room and warehouse, shooting three more people.

Among them was Michael Gann, a 30-year-old salesman with a company that supplies parts to Omni. Gann was in a meeting with another salesman, Rick Bell, and Omni engineer Daniel St. George when he heard the shots ring out.

Stepping out of the conference room, they saw the gunman walking toward them. The three men ducked back inside and dove to the floor. St. George tried to hold the door shut with his foot, but the gunman forced it open. Moments later Gann looked up and saw Marsden pointing the gun at him.

“I didn’t have time to think,” Gann said in an interview from his hospital bed. “I didn’t know where I was shot. I just felt some heat.”

Gann was struck in the hip and thigh. St. George was shot in the stomach.

“There was not really any expression on his face,” said Rick Bell, another salesman who was with Gann in the conference room but was not shot.

A sixth victim, 57-year-old James Lauerman of Anaheim, was shot in the back as he ran through the company’s large, roll-away doors to the parking lot. He underwent surgery Thursday night at Martin Luther Hospital in Anaheim, according to his wife, Anna Lauerman.

Marsden “apparently was upset about some other employees and how they were acting and got in a loud discussion about that before he pulled out a gun,” Whittier police spokesman Drylie said.

Some workers at the plant described Marsden as a quiet man who seemed to wear the same white cotton shirt and polyester pants to work every day. He would park his car a few blocks from the plant and spend his lunch hour sitting in the front seat “staring into space,” one Omni employee said.

“Nobody knew what he was doing” in his car, said the employee, who asked not to be identified. “And then after work, he would sit in his car for another couple of hours. Everyone thought that was weird.”

After the shooting, with Marsden still at large, Whittier police released a description of him and his car. Police staked out a Long Beach apartment listed as his most recent address.

Then word came from Los Angeles police that a car matching the description of Marsden’s had been found in the 9600 block of South Main Street, where a man had just shot himself.

Maria Aldana and her friend Maria Vasquez were at a phone booth in front of Nancy’s Meat Market on Main just after 11 a.m. when Marsden pulled up and parked nearby, with at least one of the tires on the curb.

The balding, bearded Marsden got out of the car with the gun in his left hand and a jacket draped over his arm, Vasquez said. He wiped the gun with his jacket, then pointed the gun at Aldana as he approached the two women.

“This is my last day of life,” he said calmly. He begun muttering obscenities, pointed the gun at Aldana again, turned away, and put the barrel to his mouth.

“I was very afraid. I wanted to say, ‘No, [don’t shoot yourself],’ ” Aldana recalled. But Marsden quickly fired and fell to the ground, his body slumped across the concrete at the meat market’s doorway.

A Whittier police detective at the suicide scene said he did not know why Marsden had come to South-Central.

“He just seemed upset. He seemed like he was scared,” said Leon Parie, a Baptist minister who witnessed the suicide. “I didn’t know what it was [about] then, but I know now.”

The shooting is the latest in a series of violent workplace incidents in Los Angeles County in recent years.

Last year, a former employee stormed into a Hughes Electronics complex in El Segundo, shooting three people and taking a hostage before surrendering to police.

In 1995, a Los Angeles city electrician shot and killed four of his supervisors at the “Piper Tech” center downtown. In 1994, a worker at another Santa Fe Springs company opened fire on his co-workers, killing three and wounding two others before turning his pistol on himself.

After Thursday’s tragedy, Omni executives called in counselors to talk to the 75 employees who were on duty for the morning shift. The company pledged to set up a trust fund for victims’ families.

“It’s terrible,” said Omni employee Reina Cardoza, as she stood trembling outside the nondescript, beige-colored company office. “No place is safe anymore. I’m so scared.’

Gann, who lives in Thousand Oaks, said he felt he had been helped by some higher power. “Somebody looked at me and smiled,” he said. “I think I’ll go to church this Sunday.”

Times staff writers Hector Tobar, Jeff Leeds and Joceyln Y. Stewart and correspondents John Cox and Debra Cano contributed to this report.