Routine Turns to Tragedy

Two were supervisors--one recently promoted--at a USDA inspections facility. One was president of the union local representing about 100 government workers at nearby Los Angeles International Airport. All three were husbands and fathers, and all three died Wednesday in a burst of workplace violence.

As police on Thursday released the identities of the U.S. Department of Agriculture employees shot the previous afternoon during a closed-door meeting about work schedules, families and co-workers tried to cope.

“It was very unexpected,” said one somber employee of the Plant Protection and Quarantine Programs facility on South La Cienega Boulevard in Inglewood.

“All of them were my friends,” the man continued, declining to give his name or to say much more. “I don’t want to talk because I want to respect their families.”

Inglewood police identified the dead as Clayton Iijima, 44, of Torrance; Morley Suzuki, also 44, of Redondo Beach; and David Rothman, 51, of Gardena. Police say Rothman shot his colleagues before turning the gun on himself.

Authorities said the three men were attending a meeting in Iijima’s ground floor office at the front of the one-story inspection building about 3 p.m. The sound of gunfire erupted from the office about 10 minutes into the meeting, which a USDA spokesman said had been planned to discuss changes in the schedules of agricultural inspection employees based at the airport.

Iijima and Rothman died in the office, struck in the head by some of the 13 bullets fired from a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun.

Suzuki was mortally wounded in the chest; he managed to get out of the office and take several steps before collapsing. Police said he was conscious when paramedics arrived but died about half an hour after being taken to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in Willowbrook.

Inglewood Police Lt. Hampton Cantrell said officials believe that Rothman shot the two supervisors and then committed suicide with a gun he had brought from home.

USDA spokesman Larry Hawkins, however, said, “We don’t really know yet who did the shooting. We want to wait until the investigation is completed” before coming to conclusions.

Routine Meeting on Work Schedules

Hawkins said Rothman, who had nine years on the job, worked as a canine handler, an inspector teamed up with a dog to watch for illicit agricultural cargo coming into the airport.

Rothman, who was married and the father of two sons and a daughter, also was president of Local 28 of the National Assn. of Agricultural Employees. It was in that capacity that he was attending the meeting, Hawkins said, contradicting earlier police reports that Rothman was being “counseled” about his job performance.

Hawkins confirmed that Rothman had earlier filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission but said he did not know the nature of the complaint. Hawkins said investigators had not yet reviewed Rothman’s employment record, adding that he didn’t know of any problems the man might have been having at work.

Asked whether meetings over shift changes are contentious, Hawkins said only that such meetings are frequent and routine throughout the department’s agricultural inspection programs.

“We don’t know what, if any, other issues might have been discussed” during Wednesday’s meeting, Hawkins said.

Little else was learned about Rothman on Thursday; neither relatives nor friends could be found.

On Thursday, many signs of the previous day’s tragedy remained. Most employees, some wearing the white shirts, black pants and jackets and gold badges that identify them as officers of the agency, showed up for work.

But few brokers or shippers arrived, and employees spent much of the day with grief counselors or discussing the incident among themselves. They did not talk to reporters.

Scraps of yellow police tape still lay about the offices and wrapped two cars in the employee parking lot--a vintage tan Volkswagen Beetle and a dark green Toyota Camry.

On the stoop outside the locked front door, someone had placed flowers--three vases of white tulips and snapdragons and a pot of pink lilies. Drops of what appeared to be blood could be seen on the steps.

Employees at the Inglewood facility are responsible for permits and inspections of shipments of U.S. agricultural commodities to foreign buyers and are charged with inspections of cargo arriving at the airport, Hawkins said.

About 25 employees work there, including entomologists and plant pathologists, dealing mainly with shippers and brokers and having little contact with the public, he added.

Suzuki, who was recently promoted to supervisor, was an entomologist.

Neighbors, Friends Are Devastated

Fallout from the shootings rippled over the South Bay neighborhoods where Iijima and Suzuki had lived.

Flower Street in Torrance was home to Iijima, the facility’s director of operations, a 22-year department veteran and the father of an 11-year-old boy.

Neighbor Grace Van Dusen said Iijima was a quiet man and a member of the homeowners association. He was in charge of watering and maintaining the gardens in the complex. She said that just Sunday he had planted flowers outside.

“We usually saw him out in the gardens,” Van Dusen said.

At Lincoln School in Redondo Beach, where all three of Suzuki’s daughters attend classes, students and staff tried to come to grips with the loss of someone whom officials described as a very involved parent.

Seventh- and eighth-grade students agreed to cancel an after-school dance out of respect for the daughters, who are in third, sixth and eighth grade.

Redondo Beach Unified School District officials sent a crisis team to campus to counsel close friends of the Suzuki girls.

The eldest came to school Thursday to seek comfort from her friends and the familiar routine, district officials said.

“Everyone here is very upset about this,” said Principal Mary Wallace, who sent students home with a letter about the tragedy. “When an eighth-grader learned about it, he was so upset that he said, ‘I don’t know if I told my dad I loved him before I came to school.’ ”

Wallace said parents circulated a list for people to sign up to take food to the Suzukis, who live near the school.

Bob Paulson, director of student services, said some friends of the Suzuki girls planned to visit the family after school.

“Their family is so highly thought of,” said Paulson, adding that Morley Suzuki coached athletics in the community and attended many community events.

“When someone like this dies, there’s no precedent established on how to deal with it. We’re reaching out and trying to provide some support and stability.”

Statistics on Workplace Deaths

The Inglewood office shootings are part of a disturbing trend, government statistics show.

According to the Atlanta-based federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, homicides have been the leading cause of death in California workplaces at least since 1990; nationwide they rank second to motor vehicle accidents.

In a report released Thursday, the CDC looked at occupational deaths from 1980 to 1994 and found that throughout the United States, homicides surpassed machinery-related injuries in 1990 as the No. 2 workplace killer.

The report did not indicate what year homicides became the leading cause of death in California.

Nationwide, workplace-related deaths have declined 27% since 1980, from 7,405 that year to 5,406 in 1994, the most recent year for which information was available.

Times staff writers Susan Abram and Marlene Cimons contributed to this story.