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Man shoots boss, colleagues
31/08/2007 10:19 - (SA)
New York - A fired employee who had lost a discrimination lawsuit fatally shot his former supervisor and injured two other people at the sprawling apartment complex where he used to work, police said.
Authorities say Paulino Valenzuela walked into his former workplace on Thursday morning, cornered 59-year-old Audley Bent in the basement and shot him to death.
Then Valenzuela shot two other workers, one critically, before riding on a city bus and subway train, still armed, and turning himself in at a courthouse, authorities said.
Valenzuela, 44, was fired in February 2005 from his job as a porter at the Co-op City housing complex in the Bronx for making threats against other employees, according to court papers.
Valenzuela had been disciplined for drinking beer on the job, cursing and threatening Bent, and telling a co-worker he would not "pass the day without dying", court papers say.
Last Friday, a judge ruled against Valenzuela in a discrimination lawsuit that alleged RiverBay Corporation's management, and Bent in particular, "hate the Latinos" on the work force.
"They always look at me with bad eyes," Valenzuela, a native of the Dominican Republic, said in a statement while representing himself in court. The judge said the case had no merit.
A manager at RiverBay, which manages the housing complex, said the shooting left workers stunned and horrified.
"It's just unbelievable," said the manager, Herbert Freedman.
One of the surviving victims was in critical condition with a neck wound. The other was treated for a gunshot wound to the arm and released.
The sprawling Co-op City was built in the late 1960s on the site of a former amusement park. It includes 35 high-rises and seven town house clusters, and has its own security force and power plant.
- AP
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