According to The Huffington Post, a New Jersey Pathmark supermarket employee, age 23, wearing military clothing opened fire at the closed store on August 31, 2012. Co-workers worked inside stocking shelves in the early morning when the gunman killed two of them and himself, a prosecutor reported.
A law enforcement official identified the gunman as an ex-Marine who was discharged in 2010. The shooter was working at the scene prior to the shooting, but left his shift at around 3:30 a.m. and returned at 4:00 am with a handgun and an AK-47 assault rifle, a Middlesex County Prosecutor said.
About 12 to 14 workers were in the store when the shooter fired at least 16 rounds from the rifle at the first workers he saw, according to the prosecutor. Co-workers hid when the man killed an 18-year-old woman and a 24-year-old man. “I do not believe that they were specifically targeted. I believe everybody in the store was a target,” said the prosecutor. At the end of the shootout, the man killed himself.
Pathmark officials and employees reported the gunman wore military clothing and had just clocked out before returning to the store to open fire. An assistant manager assisted workers to escape from the store through a back door.
At the grocery store, two long windows in the front were completely shot through. The store and its parking lot closed. Old Bridge is a community of about 65,000 across the Raritan Bay from New York City’s Staten Island borough.
U.S.News & World Report recently reported on the frequency of mass shootings in the United States: “This appears to be what will be one of the worst years ever in terms of homicides at work, worship, and obviously in terms of school shootings,” says an expert on workplace violence and professor at Bryn Mawr College.
According to a professor at Northeastern University, there is no tally on mass shootings in the United States, partly because the criteria are hard to determine. Shootings in one place do not have much in common with what happens in another place. The FBI does not consider mass killers to be the same as serial killers. A serial killer’s actions occur at different locations.
The United States has higher firearms ownership rates, and more civilian-owned firearms than other countries in the world similar to the United States in political and economic status. The United States has a greater overall crime rate. Some people blame the nation’s laws and governmental policies: “We do have a breakdown in our mental health system,” according to the expert on workplace violence and professor at Bryn Mawr College interviewed by U.S.News & World Report.
Shooters are usually people who hide intense feelings of disrespect for perceived slights, such as not getting promoted. These people may be mad at the world or blame a workplace for slights.