After Chesapeake Walmart shooting, Hampton Roads experts stress early intervention for employers
When an overnight manager killed six co-workers, then himself Nov. 22 at a Chesapeake Walmart, workplace grievances had been building for months.
Former co-workers recalled after the shooting how 31-year-old Andre Bing had become grumpy and negative, lashed out at managers and threatened to report other employees to human resources. Other co-workers had submitted complaints to Walmart about Bing’s behavior, saying he verbally harassed them, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by employee Donya Prioleau.
“This was brewing in the background for quite some time,” said Antonio Passaro, who leads the criminal justice program at Tidewater Community College.
Since 2015, Walmart has implemented an online active shooter training program, according to Associated Press reporting. The program teaches three steps to participants: Avoid the danger, keep your distance, and lastly, defend against the shooter.
But simply having a plan where employees react to an active shooting is not sufficient, Passaro said. They need to practice the plan and improve it before and after shootings to avoid chaos and panic.
“When you look at operational safety plans, they are revised after the fact,” he said.
Walmart made more changes after a gunman killed 23 people inside an El Paso, Texas, store in 2019, according to The Associated Press. The company stopped selling certain types of ammunition, now only stocking hunting rifles and related bullets. Walmart also asked customers to not carry guns into stores, but did not ban the practice.
After the Chesapeake shooting, police published a note found on Bing’s phone claiming he was harassed by co-workers. According to Prioleau’s lawsuit, Bing had also had been disciplined several times and demoted, but was later reinstated as a team lead.
Employers need to approach problematic employees from a place of compassion, said Rebecca Cowan, a Virginia Beach counselor who studies mass shootings and served on a state commission investigating the 2019 shooting at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center.
“We help troubled people because they need help,” Cowan said.
Employers must listen to employees’ concerns and provide resources to those exhibiting signs of trouble, Cowan said. Additionally, they need to implement threat assessment teams with a variety of specialists, such as law enforcement and mental health experts. An anonymous way for employees to report concerns also would help extinguish fears of retaliation.
Organizations can run background checks on prospective employees before hiring them, which can sometimes reveal potential issues, said Anne Bibeau, a Norfolk lawyer specializing in labor law. Depending on the circumstances, they may need to place employees on a leave of absence while investigating potential misconduct.
Employers need to be careful to minimize legal issues, Bibeau said. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act forbids employers from firing or disciplining employees based on a mental disability. However, she said a lawsuit may be preferable to a potential loss of life.
“Employers are often placed in the untenable position of predicting risk while trying to keep their employees safe and avoid discrimination claims,” Bibeau said.
But workplace shootings also can lead to lawsuits. Prioleau is suing the company for $50 million after she said bullets “whizzed” by her face, narrowly avoiding injury. At least two lawsuits were filed by victims against Walmart in the wake of the El Paso shooting.
Even though the number of U.S. workplace homicides grew from 409 to 454, or 11%, between 2014 and 2019, they were still down from a high of 1,080 in 1994, according to a federal report published in July.
In Virginia, 118 workers died while on the job in 2020, down 34% from 180 in 2019, according to Richmond Times-Dispatch reporting. Attacks by other people or animals — a category that includes shootings — accounted for 24 of those deaths in 2020.
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