Employee Performance Review May Have Sparked NASA Shooting

Apr 24, 2007 3:29 PM

Houston police believe a bad performance review might have led a NASA contractor to fatally shoot his co-worker and take another employee hostage before killing himself, according to CNN.com.

Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt said Saturday that an e-mail critical of an employee's work set Friday's events in motion at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The gunman, a contractor identified as Bill Phillips, received an e-mail from NASA employee David Beverly last month. The e-mail detailed Phillips' "job deficiencies" and outlined a plan for improvement.

Hurtt said Saturday that Phillips blamed Beverly for his negative job performance, bought a five-shot Smith & Wesson revolver and 20 rounds of hollow-point ammunition two days after receiving the e-mail.

On Friday, the gunman barricaded himself in a building that houses communications and tracking systems for the space shuttle. In addition to killing Beverly before taking his own life, Phillips duct-taped a woman to a chair, holding her for hours, police reported.

The female hostage escaped, suffering minor injuries.

NASA is reviewing its security procedures, a spokesman stated on Saturday.

Mike Coats, the director of the Johnson Space Center, said NASA officials had reviewed their procedures earlier this week because of the Virginia Tech shootings.

"But of course we never believed this could happen here to our family and our situation," he said.

Also on Saturday, space agency spokesman John Ira Petty told The Associated Press that NASA was conducting a continuous review of security procedures. Petty would not discuss specifics, saying the apparent murder-suicide was a police matter.

To enter the space center, workers must show an ID badge as they drive past a security guard. The badge allows workers access to designated buildings.

Phillips, an employee of Jacobs Engineering, Pasadena, Calif., had worked for NASA for 12 to 13 years and "up until recently, he has been a good employee," Coats said.

He was unmarried, had no children and lived alone.

Police said the shooter left telephone numbers and names of people to contact and wrote a note on a dry erase board in the room, according to the AP.

Hurtt said he could not recall what was written in the note.

During the confrontation, NASA employees in the building were evacuated and others were ordered to remain in their offices for several hours. Roads within the 1,600-acre space center campus were also blocked off, and a nearby middle school kept its teachers and students inside as classes ended. Doors to Mission Control were locked as standard procedure.

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