Workplace homicides increased to a distressing 458 occurrences within the past year.
She gazed upward and spotted another colleague, Connor Sturgeon, being present in the entranceway. He held a firearm.
Mayhem ensued as he initiated firing at Mitchell and their colleagues at Old National Bank in Louisville. Within a brief span, Sturgeon had claimed five bank employees' lives and injured another eight of their coworkers, including Mitchell, before he was taken down by Louisville law enforcement officers who rushed to the scene.
In the U.S., this incident was hardly an anomaly.
Countless individuals are slaughtered in the line of duty each year within the United States. As per a report published last Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 458 people were fatalities due to their workplace last year in 2023. On average, this translates to about eight deaths per week. The death toll decreased from the 524 who lost their lives at work in 2022. Between 2018 and 2023, there were a total of 2,762 workplace homicides in the U.S.
The risk of being murdered at your place of employment is undoubtedly not the only peril that laborers face. The report demonstrates a total of 5,283 individuals dying on the job in 2023, with transportation accidents emerging as the most frequent cause of death, claiming 1,942 lives last year, followed by fatalities due to falls, trips, or slips, which accounted for 885 worker deaths. However, these were unintentional fatalities.
The topic of on-the-job homicides has garnered more attention recently, following the lethal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as he prepared to enter a New York City hotel for an investor meeting. Thompson's demise and the apprehension of his alleged assailant have been making headlines.
However, numerous workplace murders go under the radar. Mass shootings such as the one at Old National Bank have become increasingly frequent, and may earn a few days of national coverage, occasionally supplanted by yet another major shooting. Other incidents involving a single fatality might attract only local news coverage, if that.
Most people arriving at their workplace remain blissfully unaware of the statistics, as did Mitchell and her colleagues when they attended a meeting that morning to discuss their Easter weekend experiences or the vacation one of them had recently returned from.
Mitchell had devoted nearly four decades of her career to banking, starting at the age of 19. She never considered her job's safety an issue. Her company mandated that she watch a training video regarding active shooters, but it barely registered with her. She watched it only because she was required to, she believed. Such incidents couldn't happen at Old National, she thought.
Even when Sturgeon stood there with his assault rifle, it failed to make any sense to her.
“I genuinely believed he had acquired the gun over the weekend and intended to show it to us. I never contemplated he would use it,” she said.
“People were scrambling out of the conference room. One managed to escape, while others did not,” she recalled. “I dived to the floor and attempted to crawl as far as I could. I was shot in my back while I was on the floor.”
Sturgeon expended his first clip right there, in the conference room. Then the shooting paused temporarily. The colleagues seated to either side of Mitchell at the conference table were no longer among the living. Fortunately, Mitchell's bullet wound was relatively shallow. She lay on the ground, holding her breath, fearing he might be checking for signs of life in his victims.
“I didn't know whether he had left or was still standing there,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘Is this really happening? Is this how I'm going to meet my end?’”
But as traumatic as the incident was for the survivors and relatives of the deceased, homicides occur at an American workplace on average about three times a week, or more.
Only about a quarter of adults reported feeling stressed about the possibility of experiencing a mass shooting at their workplace or office, according to a 2019 survey conducted for the American Psychological Association. Twice as many adults voiced their anxiety regarding a shooting potentially happening at public events such as a parade or sporting event, a shopping mall, or a school or university.
However, a study conducted by the Violence Prevention Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center funded by the National Institute of Justice, found that perpetrators' present or former workplaces were the most frequent locations for mass shootings to occur. Furthermore, 30% of the project's database of 200 mass shootings since 1966 fall into the category of workplace shootings.
“Workplace homicides often stem from personal grievances that escalate into professional settings,” explained Dr. James Dempsey, deputy director of the Violence Prevention Project and chair of the department of criminology and criminal justice at Metro State University. “For some perpetrators, workplaces represent symbols of authority or rejection, especially in instances of job loss or disciplinary action. Concurrently, humans are creatures of habit, and perpetrators often target what they know. Familiarity breeds opportunities. When someone is enraged or desperate, they act within environments they're most familiar with.”
Nonetheless, many workers didn't even have basic training regarding what to do in case of an active shooter, as did Mitchell and other bank employees who underwent such training on their computers.
“The average third-grader receives more training regarding active shooters than most workers,” said Jessica Martinez, executive director of the National Council on Occupational Safety and Health, a public interest group. Many states require students to participate in lockdown drills multiple times per year.
Martinez emphasized that since Thompson's murder, "there's heightened security for CEOs, but all workers deserve to return home at the end of the day, not just the CEOs."
Mitchell expresses support for the right to carry firearms and personally owns a gun. However, she advocates for restricting the public's access to assault-type rifles, like the one Sturgeon used during the incident. "Excessive," she describes these weapons. Additionally, she proposes stricter background checks to prevent individuals with mental health disorders from purchasing firearms. Following the shooting, Mitchell has been working to advocate for the Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention bill in Kentucky, which allows for the temporary handover of firearms from individuals if a court deems them a threat to themselves or others.
Three months after the tragedy, Mitchell resumed her job, but departed earlier this year to care for a family member. She admitted it was difficult returning to the bank. She wrestled with survivor's guilt.
"The toughest part for me has been the loss of those five people," she said. "Two of them were incredibly close to me." To this day, reflecting on her survival while those around her perished, she finds himself feeling deeply saddened and enraged. "I can't fathom why I'm still here and they're not," she confessed.
In light of the increased frequency of mass shootings, many businesses are implementing active shooter training programs to prepare their employees.
Given the statistics, it's crucial for businesses to prioritize workplace safety and invest in measures to prevent such tragedies from occurring.
