NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — On Friday, a gunman walked into a warehouse, killed two employees and fled.
In the immediate aftermath, he led officers on a chase across county lines, culminating in a standoff that shut down the interstate. It’s just the latest act of violence to happen at a Tennessee workplace, but experts said these kinds of shootings are happening more and more often.
“At around 7 o’clock we received a call of two subjects that had been shot,” Ray Smith, Chief of the Livingston Police Department said during a Friday morning press conference.
According to officials, just before the standoff, gunman James Cody John shot two people inside the Hutchinson Plant located in Livingston, TN.
“Our hearts and prayers go out to all those affected by this situation, this isn’t a regular event out here in Livingston and we appreciate all the heart-warmed prayers to our community at this time,” Smith said.
Over the past few years, there have been at least four workplace shootings that have happened in Middle Tennessee.
In 2021, three employees at an Antioch manufacturing facility were shot and the suspected gunman died after he was shot by Metro officers while fleeing the building early that morning. Metro police reported that 22-year-old Antonio King, who worked the day shift at the Antioch Smile Direct Club, came to the building during shift change and opened fire.
Then, the following year, within days of each other there were two workplace shootings at Kenny Pipe & Supply in East Nashville and a Jack in the Box. One person was left dead at each scene.
“It isn’t the most common thing that I see, but we know that workplace shootings are extremely common in the United States as what happened recently here in Tennessee,” explained Dr. Aaron Brinen, a psychologist with Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
The Violence Project, a non-profit and non-partisan research center, found current or former workplaces are among the most common sites for mass shootings. The organization also revealed the biggest motivator behind workplace shootings: employment-related issues.
“Many of us have fights with our employees and we have disagreements, and we go home and we complain to our spouse and it’s fine. I think when we stack that up with other problems where people are feeling like they’re being targeted, feeling like they can’t get ahead,”Brinen said.
According to the latest data from the CDC, nearly 400 U.S. workers died from workplace homicide in 2020.
“It’s things like people feeling excluded, people struggling, whether it be financially, people coming from areas of deprivation, those things are a bigger driver of violence,” said Brinen.
Currently, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) has taken over the investigation.
