Last week a gunman, Patrick Clayton, entered the Workers Compensation Bureau offices in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) and took several people hostage at gunpoint. The facts of this situation mirror those we typically see in rampage shootings and other incident of targeted violence: he was facing multiple losses, had a grievance, was suicidal, and wanted to call attention to his problem. One of the initial articles in the Edmonton Journal relayed the details - the gunman, Clayton, had an existing claim at the WCB for having been injured on the job and had an ongoing dispute with the WCB over whether he was well enough to return to work. Three months before this incident, he told his neighbors (and possibly others) that he was thinking about killing himself. He was in the middle of a bitter custody battle over his 6 year-old son. And he recently had been told his workers compensation benefits would soon end.
One fascinating aspect to this case was the reaction of the hostages to the gunman. According to reports that came out after the incident was over, the hostages had listened to Clayton's story and his goal to call attention to his situation, and helped him craft emails to local media. Some have credited this reaction by the hostages - and expert work by the trained hostage negotiators - with helping to resolve this incident without any bloodshed or injuries.
I happened to be in Edmonton at the time this hostage incident unfolded, in town to provide threat assessment training to a college in Edmonton (see the 26 OCT blog post). I was interviewed by several media outlets regarding the WCB hostage incident, including the Edmonton Journal, Metro News (Canada), and a live interview on Alberta Prime Time, a province-wide television program.
