Going postal is an American English slang phrase referring to becoming extremely and uncontrollably angry, often to the point of violence, and usually in a workplace environment. The expression derives from a series of incidents from 1986 onward in which United States Postal Service (USPS) workers shot and killed managers, fellow workers, police officers and members of the general public in acts of mass murder. Between 1970 and 1997, more than 40 people were killed by then-current or former employees in at least 20 incidents of workplace rage. Between 1986 and 2011, workplace shootings happened roughly twice per year, with an average of 1.18 people killed per year.
Charles Linza McNary was an American Republican politician from Oregon. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1917 to 1944 and was Senate Minority Leader from 1933 to 1944. In the Senate, McNary helped to pass legislation that led to the construction of Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, and worked on agricultural and forestry issues. He also supported many of the New Deal programs at the beginning of the Great Depression. Until Mark Hatfield surpassed his mark in 1993, he was Oregon's longest-serving senator.
Randall Brent Woodfield is an American serial killer, serial rapist, kidnapper, robber, burglar and former football player who was dubbed the I-5 Killer or the I-5 Bandit by the media due to the crimes he committed along the Interstate 5 corridor running through Washington, Oregon and California. Before his capture, Woodfield was suspected of multiple sexual assaults and murders. Though convicted in only one murder, he has been linked to a total of 18 murders and is suspected of having killed up to as many as 44 people.
Robert Freeman Smith, commonly known as Bob Smith, was an American Republican politician who represented Oregon in the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 1995 and from 1997 to 1999.
Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP), also known as Oregon State Prison, is a maximum security prison in the northwest United States in Salem, Oregon. Originally opened in Portland 173 years ago in 1851, it relocated to Salem fifteen years later. The 2,242-capacity prison is the oldest in the state; the all-male facility is operated by the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC). OSP contains an intensive management wing, which is being transformed into a psychiatric facility for mentally ill prisoners throughout Oregon.
Douglas Franklin Wright was an American serial killer who murdered at least seven people in Oregon between 1969 and 1991. He was sentenced to death for three of these murders and was executed in 1996 at the Oregon State Penitentiary, becoming the first person to be executed in Oregon since 1962. He was also the first person executed in Oregon by lethal injection.
Keith Hunter Jesperson is a Canadian-American serial killer who murdered at least eight women in the United States during the early 1990s. He was known as the "Happy Face Killer" because he drew smiley faces on his many letters to the media and authorities. Many of his victims were sex workers and transients who had no connection to him. Strangulation was Jesperson's preferred method of murdering, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.
John Hugh McNary was an American attorney and jurist in the state of Oregon. He served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon in Portland. A native of Oregon, he also served as a district attorney and as an assistant district attorney in Salem. His brother Charles would serve as a United States senator.
Thomas A. Livesley was an American businessman and politician in the state of Oregon. A successful hop farmer and broker, Livesley was known as the "Hop King" of Oregon. Livesley served as mayor of Salem and as a state representative.
The Oregon State Bar (OSB) is a public corporation and instrumentality of the Oregon Judicial Department in the U.S. state of Oregon. Founded in 1890 as the private Oregon Bar Association, it became a public entity in 1935 that regulates the legal profession. The public corporation is part of the Oregon Judicial Department.
Walter Clarence Winslow was an American attorney in Oregon. A native of the state, he practiced law in Salem and later served temporarily on the Oregon Supreme Court. In legal practice he worked for brothers John Hugh McNary and Charles L. McNary in his early years as a lawyer.
Bobby Jack Fowler was an American rapist and suspected serial killer who was active in the United States and Canada from 1973 to 1995. He died in prison of lung cancer during a 16-year sentence following a conviction for rape, kidnapping and attempted rape in Newport, Oregon, in 1996.
Anthony Cook and Nathaniel Cook are American brothers and serial killers who committed at least nine rape-murders between 1973 and 1981. They were active in Toledo, Ohio, and surrounding areas with most of their victims being young couples. Anthony was arrested and convicted for the final murder, but his and Nathaniel's guilt in the other killings would not be uncovered until Nathaniel was detained for a misdemeanor in 1998, after which DNA profiling exposed their involvement. Both brothers were later convicted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment; Anthony received multiple life sentences, while Nathaniel was sentenced to 75 years with a minimum of fifteen years served, and he was paroled after eighteen years in 2018.
On November 7, 2018, a mass shooting occurred in Thousand Oaks, California, United States, at the Borderline Bar and Grill, a country-western bar frequented by college students. Thirteen people were killed, including the perpetrator, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and a police officer who was shot multiple times, with the fatal round accidentally being fired by another officer. One other person sustained a gunshot wound, while fifteen others were injured by incidental causes.
William Scott Smith is an American serial killer and kidnapper who has been convicted of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering at least four women in Salem, Oregon from 1981 to 1984. For his known crimes, Smith was sentenced to four life terms, and remains a suspect in several other murders.
On February 19, 2022, Benjamin Jeffrey Smith approached and assaulted a small group of women, at the edge of Normandale Park in Portland, Oregon, United States. He murdered one, caused the paralysis of another from the shoulders down, and seriously injured three others, including a bystander who had approached to deescalate.
Dixie Tavern is a bar in Portland, Oregon.
On 9 July 2022, a mass shooting took place at a tavern in Orlando, Soweto, Gauteng, South Africa. 16 people were killed in the incident.
On August 28, 2022, a gunman opened fire at a Safeway grocery store in Bend, Oregon, killing two men, one of whom was an employee, and wounding two other people before committing suicide.
