When the massacre began, the American Civic Association was bustling with people trying to carve out their piece of the American dream — recent arrivals taking English classes and citizenship exams in a Rust Belt city with a long history of greeting immigrants.
On Friday morning, a gunman barricaded the back door of the immigration services center with a car, thwarting escape, then entered through the front door and opened fired, killing 13 people and seriously wounding four others before apparently committing suicide.
Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski said the gunman gave no warning. “I don’t think there was any conversation,” he said.
As he entered the building, the gunman killed one receptionist and shot another in the stomach. She pretended to be dead, hiding under a table and waiting for a chance to call 911 while the gunman moved down the hallway and sought more victims in a nearby room. There, he opened fire on a group taking a citizenship class.
More Top Picks Best Orthopedic Shoes For Hammer Toes 2
Police arrived less than two minutes after receiving the receptionist’s call at 10:31 a.m., Zikuski said. Amid the carnage they found a body believed to be the shooter’s, along with two handguns, body armor, ammunition and a gun magazine. He apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“We have no idea what the motive is,” Zikuski said, but added the shooter was “no stranger to the civic association.”
An anonymous law-enforcement source told The Associated Press that the gunman had an identification card that said his name was Jiverly Voong, 42. Authorities searched the gunman’s home Friday and confiscated computer hard drives, a brown rifle case and luggage.
Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan, who described Friday as “the most tragic day in Binghamton history,” said Voong reportedly had been laid off from his job at IBM nearby. “I believe he was trying to get assistance [at the center] for obtaining employment,” Ryan said.
“The word was he lost his job and was pretty distraught. … If the story checks out, it’s obvious that he was very concerned about being unemployed and not dealing with it well.”
An IBM employee with access to staff lists could not find any Jiverly Voong as a former employee.
During the shooting, 26 people sought refuge in a boiler room. Afterward, the SWAT team removed 37 people from the building, four of them critically injured. Many were immigrants who spoke little or no English.
Binghamton is a town of about 46,000 people, 140 miles northwest of New York City. Ryan described it as “a very proud city,” with 30 languages spoken at local schools and a long history of welcoming immigrants — from Europe in the past and from Asia recently.
The city’s Main Street features old, four-story brick buildings in the classic style of the industrial Northeast, with a sprinkling of ethnic restaurants and food marts and a nearby Martin Luther King Jr. memorial promenade. The Binghamton area is known as the birthplace of IBM, which has suffered job cuts in recent years.
“We really celebrate all the cultures here,” Ryan said. “Because there has always been a strong immigrant population here, I just think it’s been somewhat of a natural fit.”
New York Gov. David Paterson said he had received a call from Vice President Joe Biden expressing his condolences.
President Barack Obama, traveling in Europe, issued this statement: “Michelle and I were shocked and deeply saddened to learn about the act of senseless violence in Binghamton, N.Y., today. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims, their families and the people of Binghamton. We don’t yet know all the facts, but my administration is actively monitoring the situation, and the vice president is in touch with Gov. Paterson and local officials to track developments.”
The shooting resonated with groups that work with immigrants around the nation.
Ali Noorani — executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant advocacy group in Washington, D.C. — said he urged people to resist using the shooting for political purposes in the immigration debate. Any workplace shooting is horrific, he said, but this was even more tragic because it occurred at a place that gives hope to newcomers to the country.
“This is truly an American tragedy in that these were people who were looking to become the newest of our American communities,” Noorani said. “So many people come to this country fleeing persecution or violence and here they were studying to become citizens, only to become victims of violence.”
Ryan said that a family center had been set up in Binghamton where relatives could come to find out about the victims.
Every pew was filled Friday evening at a candlelight vigil for the victims at the Redeemer Lutheran Church. In attendance was Greg Jenkins, a disaster coordinator for the Broome County Council of Churches, who said the area had a long history of welcoming immigrants — Asians, Italians, Poles, Bosnians.
“They were trying to do it the right way, becoming American citizens,” he said of the victims, shaking his head as he gripped a candle.
– – –
OTHER RECENT MASS SHOOTINGS
March 10
A gunman kills 10 people, including five members of his own family, in two Alabama towns before taking his own life at the metals plant where he worked.
March 21
Three Oakland, Calif., police officers are killed in a shootout with a man wanted for a parole violation, who is also killed. The following day, a fourth officer shot by the man dies.
Sunday
More Top Picks Jabra Elite 10
A man kills seven residents and a nurse at a Carthage, N.C., nursing home before being shot and subdued by police.
SOURCES: Tribune and news service reports, ESRI, TeleAtlas
TRIBUNE
———–
Tragedy in New York
For photos from the Binghamton, N.Y., shootings, see chicagotribune.com/nydeaths