Former Postal Worker Kills 5, Herself

(CBS/AP)  A former employee who was once removed from a postal facility because of strange behavior returned to the mail processing plant with a gun and shot five workers to death, critically wounded another and killed herself in a late-night rampage, authorities said Tuesday.

"Chances are she might have known her victims," U.S. Postal Inspector Randy DeGasperin told a news conference the morning after the woman made her way inside the gated facility and left a trail of bodies that ended with her own.

The 44-year-old woman, whose identity was not released pending notification of her relatives, had worked at the Santa Barbara Processing and Distribution Center more than two years ago but was given a disability retirement in 2003 for an unspecified psychological reason, postal authorities said.

The attack Monday night was also the biggest bloodbath at a U.S. postal installation since a massacre 20 years ago helped give rise to the term "going postal."

The rampage — the nation's first deadly postal shooting in nearly eight years — sent employees running from the sprawling Southern California complex and prompted authorities to warn nearby residents to stay indoors as they searched for the killer.

The woman had not worked at the plant for more than two years but still managed to get inside the fenced and guarded Santa Barbara Processing and Distribution Center, apparently by driving her car close behind another vehicle through a gate, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Anderson said.

According to witnesses at the scene, the shooter was armed with a 9mm pistol and re-loaded at least once during her rampage, CBS News' Manuel Gallegus reports.

Authorities found two people dead outside the plant, blocks from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Another body was just outside the door, and a wounded woman was just inside. Three more bodies — including that of the killer — were farther inside.

The wounded woman was hospitalized in critical condition. She had been shot in the head.

All of the killer's victims were believed to be employees at the postal center.

DeGasperin said the woman was placed on medical leave in 2003 for psychological reasons. He said she had been removed from the building by sheriff's deputies that year for acting strangely. She made no threats, but other workers were afraid she might hurt herself, authorities said.

The sheriff said the woman's hair had been cut, and her appearance was different from when she worked at the plant. Her electronic pass card had been taken away when she stopped working at the facility, he said.

James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston and an expert on homicides, said the death toll might be the highest ever for any workplace shooting carried out by a woman.

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