Postal Worker Held in Slaying of Supervisor

A “quiet, unassuming” 22-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service, known in his Azusa neighborhood as the Cat Man because he cared for so many strays, shot and killed his supervisor early Sunday at a 24-hour mail processing facility in the City of Industry, authorities said.

Bruce William Clark, 58, was disarmed by fellow employees and held for sheriff’s deputies after he fatally shot James Whooper III, 50, of Rancho Cucamonga, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Hellmold.

Shortly before the 2:30 a.m. shooting at the sprawling facility in the 15400 block of Gale Avenue, Clark, a distribution clerk, had argued with Whooper, a mail processing supervisor, and punched him in the back of the head, deputies said.

As Whooper went to report the incident to a superior, Clark left the room and returned with a paper bag, Hellmold said. When Whooper asked Clark what was in the bag, Clark opened it, pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and fired twice, striking Whooper in the upper body and face, Hellmold said.

Whooper, who had transferred to the Industry postal facility 2 1/2 months ago, died at the scene. Clark was held without bail for investigation of murder at the sheriff’s station in Industry, deputies said.

Stunned postal officials were at a loss to explain Sunday’s shooting, the latest in series of attacks that have made homicide the second leading cause of death on the job for their employees.

“I’ve asked the question ‘Why?’ and I do not have that answer,” Thomas Wilson, manager of the City of Industry facility, told reporters Sunday. “I really need an answer, but right now it’s a total unknown.”

He described Clark as a “very quiet, unassuming gentleman who reported to work on time every day” and had no record of disciplinary problems. Whooper, Wilson said, “had no history of conflict with other employees. In fact, he was a very soft-spoken man known as a progressive-style manager.”

In a statement released in Washington, D.C., Postmaster General Marvin Runyon said he was “saddened and shocked by this senseless act of violence. Our thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Whooper’s family. . . . Violence in our society is too common today and is unacceptable in any form.”

Postal employee Richard Medina described both men as quiet and said he was surprised by the shooting. Sunday’s incident does not make him worry about his own safety--”I’ve been in a lot of tough situations”--but, Medina added, “I am concerned about my wife, who also works here.”

But Robert Mosqueda, who has worked 11 years for the Postal Service, said he was “a little nervous, but I have a job to do. Hopefully, we’ll get over this, but it will take a long time.”

On the Azusa cul-de-sac where Clark lives, neighbor Lilly Lopez, 18, said she could not believe that he would have shot someone. “He was a little old, fragile and quiet for that,” she said. “He is very quiet, very clean, very concerned. If people got hurt, he’d be there.”

Another neighbor, Pauline Skeldon, said she thought Clark had been shot when she first heard news reports of the incident. “I couldn’t imagine that he would have been the aggressor,” she said.

“I was shocked to say the least,” she said. “He’d feed all the stray cats in the neighborhood, and he was such a good worker. I just didn’t realize he had that kind of a temper. He was so easygoing.”

Two large bowls, one filled with cat food and the other with water, sat on Clark’s front porch Sunday. Neighbors said sheriff’s deputies had removed several cats from the home. The only relative neighbors knew of was Clark’s brother, who moved to Idaho a year or two ago.

Said one neighbor: “The cats were his main family.”

Jon White said his only contact with Clark was when his neighbor stopped by to see if one of his missing cats might have strayed into White’s camper.

“It seemed like he wouldn’t recognize you as a person,” White said. “He would just come over to look for his cats.”

When he heard about the shooting, White said, his reaction was: “No, no, no. [Violence] doesn’t come this close, does it?”

Whooper lived on a different cul-de-sac, where barefoot youngsters tossed a football Sunday, and residents sat in front of open garages. They recalled a neighbor who liked to ski on winter weekends and was a favorite of neighborhood teen-agers because he paid them well to water his lawn while he was away.

“James had no enemies,” said neighbor Constantin Voicu. Whooper “would honk the horn and wave if he saw me in the driveway,” Voicu said. “He was a nice guy.”

The City of Industry postal facility is the site of a special program allowing employees more decision-making authority--an effort designed to increase morale. Manager Wilson said postal officials recently praised his plant for having the fewest employee grievances, and employees gave it high marks as a good place to work.

A thousand workers process 5 million pieces of mail a day at the facility, Wilson said, and another 1,800 letter carriers work out of the station. About 100 employees were working at the time of the shooting, but it was unclear how many were in the immediate area, Wilson said.

Since 1980, at least 35 people have died in shootings at postal facilities around the country. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control released a report last August finding that homicide was the second leading cause of death on the job for postal workers.

That rate is similar to the national homicide rate for all industries, the report said, but more postal workers are killed by co-workers than in any other industry. Of the 35 killings since 1980, 14 came from a single incident in Edmond, Okla., the report said.

In that massacre, part-time letter carrier Patrick Henry Sherrill killed 14 people at the Edmond post office on Aug. 20, 1986, then took his own life.

Last March 21, a debt-ridden former postal employee, 29-year-old Christopher Green, killed four people and wounded another during a holdup at the Montclair, N.J., post office.

The last California shooting was on May 6, 1993, when fired worker Mark Richard Hilbun killed an employee and wounded another at a post office in the Orange County community of Dana Point.

On Aug. 10, 1989, postal worker John Merlin Taylor of suburban San Diego shot and killed his wife at their Escondido home, then drove to Escondido’s Orange Glen post office, where he shot and killed two colleagues and wounded another before killing himself.

A Postal Police officer who asked not to be identified described Sunday’s shooting as “sickening. It’s really too bad.”

At her post office box on Sunday, postal customer Jeanne Etchebarren took a fatalistic view. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen to anyone these days,” she said. “People are just going crazy.”

John Ruelas, of La Puente, said the City of Industry facility is his favorite because it is large and clean, and service is fast. But the shooting caused him to reflect on crime in the area. “Just when you think things are getting better, then something like this happens,” he said. “You hear about so much crime that you become immune.”