SAN FRANCISCO--A UPS driver opened fire with a handgun inside a United Parcel Service Inc delivery center in San Francisco on Wednesday, killing three co-workers before fatally shooting himself as police closed in, authorities and company officials said.
The victims, like the gunman, were all company drivers, said Steve Gaut, head of investor relations at UPS. The attack unfolded as the workers were gathered for their daily morning meeting before they were due to head out on their delivery rounds, Gaut added.
Two other people were taken to an area hospital with gunshot wounds, and another five individuals sustained less serious injuries in a frantic exit from the building, San Francisco police said. Authorities did not immediately identify the gunman or the victims.
Police said the gunman took his own life before officers who swarmed the building ever fired a shot. Police offered no explanation as to a possible motive for the violence. But Assistant Police Chief Toney Chaplin told a news conference the shooting was not an act of terrorism.
Police said they recovered two firearms from the UPS facility, including the murder weapon, which they described as an "assault pistol."
The UPS facility, a package-sorting and delivery hub that serves the greater San Francisco area and employs about 350 workers in the city's Potrero Hill area, was placed under a security lockdown for six hours. The gun violence there erupted hours after another, unrelated mass shooting at a charity baseball practice in the suburbs of the nation's capital left a congressman and several others wounded before the assailant was killed by police.
Gaut said the facility’s employees were dismissed from work once the lockdown was lifted and that most had since left the building. The company is providing trauma and grief counseling.
