A software tester at an Internet consulting company in this Boston suburb came to work as usual Tuesday, talked with his co-workers and then, authorities said, took out a semiautomatic rifle and a shotgun and killed seven of them.
Police responding to emergency calls at about 11 a.m. said they found Michael McDermott, 42, sitting silent and unresponsive with his loaded weapons in the lobby of Edgewater Technology Inc. and arrested him without resistance.
Authorities said they were investigating whether McDermott might have been upset about the company’s plans to comply with an Internal Revenue Service request that his wages be garnished to pay back taxes he owed.
Of those killed, two were in the company’s reception area and five were in its accounting section, said Middlesex County District Atty. Martha Coakley. She said Edgewater had agreed not to begin taking out money from McDermott’s paycheck until after the holidays.
All the victims were killed by multiple gunshot wounds and no one else was wounded in the incident, Coakley said, adding that McDermott also was carrying a semiautomatic handgun.
He is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday at Malden District Court on seven counts of first-degree murder.
Coakley identified the victims as Jennifer Bragg-Capobianco; Janice Hagerty; Louis Javelle; Rose Manfredi, 49; Paul Marceau; Cheryl Troy; and Craig Wood, 29. All ages and hometowns were not immediately released.
“Suffice it to say there was an enormous amount of firepower that occurred in the building,” Coakley said.
Prosecutor John McEvoy said there were no other gunmen involved. Police searched the building until 2:15 p.m. to ensure that no possible accomplices remained.
Coakley described a chilling sequence of events, which began about two hours after McDermott reported to work:
McDermott had “discussions” with some employees before he allegedly gunned down Hagerty and another victim in the reception area, Coakley said. He then is alleged to have walked about 50 feet to an accounting area where he methodically killed five persons at their workstations.
Coakley said the shootings do not appear to have been random because the suspect walked past several people during the rampage.
Frantic 911 calls began almost immediately, Coakley said. Wakefield police arrived in two minutes and set up a perimeter. A small group of officers entered the building, saw Hagerty’s body and observed McDermott sitting calmly in a chair.
“The officers made a split-second decision to hold their fire and effect an arrest,” said Police Chief Stephen Doherty. “To me, that’s a tremendous piece of police work.”
Coakley said McDermott has worked for a year at Edgewater, which handles software development for businesses involved in Internet commerce. Headquartered at the Harvard Mills complex, Edgewater employs about 150 people in Wakefield and 240 overall in Massachusetts. It also has offices in Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota and New Hampshire.
“Everyone at Edgewater Technology is shocked and devastated by the loss of our friends,” said Shirley Singleton, the company’s chief executive officer.
Massachusetts Gov. Paul Cellucci said he was “enormously saddened” by the killings.
“Especially during this time of peace and goodwill, this senseless tragedy is deeply disturbing and reminds us all that every life is precious and every day with our loved ones important,” Cellucci said.
About 80 workers were at the Wakefield offices when the shooting spree occurred. Employees said security is not tight at the company’s main entrance, where the suspect is believed to have entered the three-story building.
About five employees were meeting in a conference room behind the receptionist’s area when they heard a shot.
“I thought it was something falling,” said one employee, asking to remain anonymous. Then a burst of rapid gunfire shattered conference room windows.
“We hit the floor and fortunately there was a back-door exit,” the worker said. The group ran to a nearby office and called police.
The shooting was the worst rampage in an American workplace since Nov. 2 of last year, when Brian Uyesugi, a 40-year-old copier repairman, shot seven people dead at a Xerox Corp. office in Honolulu. He is serving a life sentence. About three months earlier, 44-year-old day trader Mark Barton killed nine people in brokerage offices in Atlanta. He committed suicide.
Darren Emory, the manager of a nearby business, said about a dozen Edgewater employees raced into his store after the shooting began.
“They were frightened,” he said. “They began talking among themselves, wondering if the gunman was still in there.”
Frank Harrington said he was working in the basement when he heard shots on the first floor. “A lot of us got out of the building in a hurry …”
Harrington, 50, said he heard people screaming, and then gunfire. “It was pretty fast: Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!” Harrington said.
Several employees remained behind closed doors on upper floors, waiting as SWAT teams swept through the surrounded building to ensure their safe exit.
McDermott later met for an hour in the police lockup with his lawyer and was seen taking notes on a legal pad.
Kevin Forzese, who lived upstairs from McDermott in Haverhill, Mass., said the suspect had never mentioned money problems. He also said McDermott had mentioned that he collected antique guns but that he had never seen any weapons in McDermott’s apartment.
“He never talked about the company,” Forzese said. “I talked to him about money and he said he was doing really well.”
Born in Plymouth, Mass., McDermott served six years in the Navy as an electrician on the USS Narwhal, a nuclear submarine based in Charleston, S.C., according to Jack Semelsberger, who supervised McDermott for three of those years. Semelsberger remembers an easygoing sailor who fit in with the rest of the crew. He was “a fun guy, not a troublemaker,” Semelsberger said.
Court records show that McDermott was married in 1992 and divorced five years later. His ex-wife afterward moved to Palatine, Ill.
He had no criminal record, according to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety.
After the shooting, more than 100 workers from Edgewater and other companies in the Harvard Mills complex gathered to console each other in nearby St. Joseph’s Church, where a dozen clergy and counselors had assembled.
About 3 p.m., stunned employees were escorted out of the church and back to the building to collect their belongings.
Edgewater’s stock price has fallen by about 50 percent since spring, but employees said they did not sense many financial anxieties among co-workers.
“I wouldn’t say there was any more tension in our company than in any other high-tech company” about share prices, said Larry Fortin, Edgewater’s director of consulting. “It’s a wonderful place to work where leaders really care about the employees.”
Coakley said the company will be closed for a week while investigators try to re-create the rampage.
The weapons still had ammunition when police arrested McDermott, police said. Coakley, when asked, said she does not know why the gunman stopped killing.
