The recent shooting at Virginia Tech has prompted people’s thoughts to return to similar shootings around the country. The Edmond Post Office Massacre, the shooting that prompted the phrase “going postal,” is one such event. The shootings happened on
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I survived the Edmond Post Office massacre. Patrick Sherrill was not ever married. The description I've read here is incorrect.
He was a relief carrier. He would carry different routes on different days, and was making delivery errors (easy enough if you're not that familiar with a route). He also delivered mail later than the customers were used to getting it. When people called to complain, they spoke to supervisors. These supervisors didn't like dealing with unhappy people. Patrick was counseled to do a better job, but the best relief carrier on the planet will make errors, and will deliver later than the regular carrier.
I was present on the afternoon of
When Patrick came out of the office, he did a German goose-step march to the breakroom where he used the pay phone. We learned later that he had called Veterans Affairs to ask for their help in getting an immediate transfer to a different post office. Nothing happens immediately with the postal service, and the next morning he began killing people. On the afternoon before the killings, he approached a female clerk who had been kind to him (while most people ignored him or hassled him) and asked her if she was coming to work the next day. She replied, "Of course." He told her she should stay home.
He began with one of the two supervisors who had spoken to him the previous day. The other supervisor had, for the first time ever, overslept. He was an hour late when the killings began. Patrick must have thought that the man wasn't coming in that day.
The second victim was Mike Rockne, grandson of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne.
14 died, 7 others wounded. Some of the wounded survived because they played dead. I heard screams, begging, and a lot of shots. The smell of burnt gunpowder in the building was horrible.
Everything took no more than 15-20 minutes.
I was crouched on the floor, in plain view, and knew he would kill me. I just hoped it would be fast, that it wouldn't hurt, and I wondered if I would even know when it happened. I was calm. There was no way out of the building, I thought, because someone had run to some exits and returned to tell me that Patrick had chained and locked them closed.
A co-worker took me by the arm and led me up front to the customer service counter. We went over the counter and out the front door. This turned out to be an exit that people had used prior to us; there was blood on the counter. As we went out the door, I saw the second supervisor driving up in his truck with a puzzled look on his face, as postal workers, ambulances, police, the S.W.A.T. team were at the sides of the building, and wounded were laid out on the grass.
My former husband heard the news on the radio that someone had been shot at the Edmond Post Office. He called the office. We know now that it was Patrick who answered. My husband asked if someone had been shot. Patrick replied, "Yes, and I'm not through." and hung up.
The killings began at about
The Postmaster General of the