When employees kill other employees: the case of Joseph T. Wesbecker

On the morning of Sept 14, 1989, Joseph T. Wesbecker, an emotionally disturbed employee on long-term disability leave from the Standard Gravure Company in Louisville, KY entered the plant in downtown Louisville and killed eight coworkers and injured 12 others with a semiautomatic "assault" rifle before taking his own life with a pistol. In this paper, the facts surrounding Wesbecker's life and the events leading up to the tragedy were examined to determine the degree of "fit" to Dr John Monahan's model for the prediction of violent behavior. Although several of the 10 predictors identified by Monahan demonstrated validity, several others did not. The Wesbecker case underscores both the difficulty in predicting violence and the challenges that occupational mental health professionals face in minimizing acts of violence in the workplace.