http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-07-08-miss-shooting- main_x.htm
USATODAY Nation 6 dead in Miss. factory shooting By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY A heavily armed man opened fire Tuesday on fellow workers at a Lockheed Martin plant in Meridian, Miss., killing five people at close range and wounding nine others before fatally shooting himself, authorities said. The rampage at the plant's assembly line began about 9:30 a.m., just after an employees' meeting that was attended by 13 people. Doug Williams, who family members said had worked at the plant for more than 15 years, left the meeting and returned from his car with a shotgun and a semiautomatic weapon, authorities said. Dressed in a black T-shirt and camouflage pants, with extra ammunition stuffed in his pants and in a bandoleer around his shoulder, Williams began firing. "He appeared to walk up to individuals and fire at close range," Lauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie said. "Several of his victims fell directly at their work station." Sollie said two of those killed had attended the meeting. He said most of the victims were shot in the torso, and that Williams, 48, died from a blast to his torso. Investigators found more weapons and ammunition in Williams' car and home. It was the deadliest workplace shooting in the USA since December 2000, when a software tester killed seven people at an Internet firm in Wakefield, Mass. Assembly line worker Booker Steverson said that after hearing a shot, "I walked to the aisle and saw him aiming his gun. I took off." Steverson said Williams, who was white, was a racist. That was echoed by Bobby McCall, whose wife, Lanette, 47, a black woman who had worked at the plant for 15 years, was among those killed. "She said he made a threat against black people," a distraught McCall told reporters. Authorities in Meridian, a city of about 40,000, were more cautious about the idea that race was a factor. Four of those killed by Williams were black; the other was white. But Sollie told USA TODAY that most of the injured are white. He said there did not seem to be a pattern in the targets' race or gender. Leon Williams, a cousin of the gunman, said he did not know of any animosity Doug Williams had toward blacks. Leon Williams said his cousin had been depressed and was "going through a lot of things." He said Doug Williams had expressed concern "about something to do with a meeting at work." "I can't believe he would do something like this," Leon Williams said. "He was tender-hearted, a loving guy. He had friends who were black people." In Bethesda, Md., a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest defense contractor with about 125,000 employees, declined to comment about Williams or Tuesday's meeting. The Meridian plant employs about 150 and produces parts for fighter jets. Contributing: Wire reports __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com [IMPORTANT NOTE: The views and opinions expressed on this list are solely those of the authors and/or publications, and do not necessarily represent or reflect the official political positions of the Black Radical Congress (BRC). Official BRC statements, position papers, press releases, action alerts, and announcements are distributed exclusively via the BRC-PRESS list. As a subscriber to this list, you have been added to the BRC-PRESS list automatically.] [Articles on BRC-NEWS may be forwarded and posted on other mailing lists, as long as the wording/attribution is not altered in any way. In particular, if there is a reference to a web site where an article was originally located, do *not* remove that. Unless stated otherwise, do *not* publish or post the entire text of any articles on web sites or in print, without getting *explicit* permission from the article author or copyright holder. Check the fair use provisions of the copyright law in your country for details on what you can and can't do. As a courtesy, we'd appreciate it if you let folks know how to subscribe to BRC-NEWS, by leaving in the first seven lines of the signature below.] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News Articles/Reports -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive: <http://groups.yahoo.com/messages/brc-news> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive: <http://www.escribe.com/politics/brc-news> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- <www.blackradicalcongress.org> | BRC | <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
