Postal Shootings

Friday, Dec. 20, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

The U.S. Postal Service employs more than 8,000 workers. According to the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, workers have a 6-in-a-million chance of getting killed while working for the Postal Service. Still, post offices have been the scene of several shootings in recent years:

* JULY 9, 1995: A postal worker walked up to his boss in a processing center in City of Industry, Calif., pulled a handgun from a paper bag and shot him to death. Bruce William Clark, 58, was arrested.

* MARCH 21, 1995: Christopher Green, 29, a former postal worker burdened with "a mountain of debt," killed four people and wounded another during a holdup at the Monclair, N.J., post office. Green was sentenced to life in prison on Sept. 20.

* MAY 6, 1993: Postal worker Larry Jason killed one worker and wounded two others at the post office garage in Dearborn, Mich., before killing himself.

* MAY 6, 1993: Police said fired postal employee Mark Richard Hilburn walked into a post office in the Dana Point community near Los Angeles and shot two workers, killing one.

* NOV. 14, 1991: Fired postal worker Thomas McIlvane killed four supervisors and wounded five employees at his former post office in Royal Oak, Mich., and then killed himself.

* OCT. 10, 1991: Joseph Harris, a fired postal worker, killed a former supervisor and her boyfriend at their home in Wayne, N.J., then went to the Ridgewood post office, where he killed two mail handlers as they arrived for work. He surrendered after a 4 1/2-hour standoff with police. He was sentenced to death in May.

* AUG. 10, 1989: Postal worker John Merlin Taylor of Escondido, Calif., shot and killed his wife at their home, then drove to the Orange Glen post office, where he shot and killed two colleagues and wounded another before killing himself.

* AUG. 20, 1986: Patrick Henry Sherrill, a part-time letter carrier in Edmond, Okla., killed 14 people in the post office there before taking his own life. Sherrill had a history of work problems and faced the possibility of being fired.