On May 31, 2019, a disgruntled city of Virginia Beach employee shot and killed a city contractor in broad daylight just outside Building 2 at the Municipal Center, before walking into the building, brandishing a gun. And then, in what should have been one of the safest and securest workplaces in town, the security failures were so severe, so catastrophic, that a man with handguns was able to commit the second worst workplace mass shooting in U.S. history, in a government building mere steps from police headquarters.
At the city of Virginia Beach’s second most important government building, accessible to the public and housing hundreds of city employees, there were no police officers or security measures to stop an armed gunman from entering. Nor was he limited to the public areas of the building. Despite his resignation earlier that day, his city-issued key card allowed him to open the building’s interior doors.
Responding officers did not have that access; they could not override the city’s key card door system to gain access to interior portions of the building. The gunman was able to roam freely throughout the building, hunting down his victims, killing not one more person or two more people, but 11 more people, spread throughout all three floors of the building and a stairwell. The city’s key card door system, meant to provide security, locked the police out as a bloody massacre took place and city employees were murdered and terrorized within.
The city of Virginia Beach was responsible for the security of Building 2 and had an obligation to provide city employees a reasonably safe workplace. The undeniable reality is that the city fell short of those obligations. And the uncomfortable, heartbreaking truth is that those failures cost lives. The lives of city employees such as my mom, Mary Lou Gayle.
I do not think those failures were intentional. The same is true for the human resources shortcomings that gave rise to a hostile workplace while failing to address behavioral concerns, or that allowed an employee to retain a key card to the building after resigning. The failures weren’t intentional. That doesn’t mean the failures didn’t happen. That doesn’t mean the victims’ families don’t deserve accountability.
This is about accountability, not liability. Not a single victims’ family has filed suit against the city. This isn’t about attacking the city for mistakes that can’t be unmade. But people died. Surely it is not too much to expect those mistakes to be acknowledged, or for the city to take responsibility for the consequences of those mistakes.
The city’s failures cost lives. Rather than investigate those failures and hold itself accountable, the city treated the tragedy like a public relations problem to be managed, promised victims’ families answers and support, then consistently failed to provide either.
But we know all we need to know to do the right thing now. We know the city owed its employees a safe workplace. We know the city clearly failed to provide that. We know the victims’ families and survivors have suffered incalculable costs due to that failure. And we know the city itself has done nothing to ease the burden of those costs.
Compared to recent news coverage of lawsuits against municipalities, it is clear the amount we are seeking from the General Assembly in support, $40 million total for 12 victims’ families and hundreds of survivors, is an extremely modest request given the scope of the tragedy and the number of people harmed. It is an outrage that we have been forced to request it from the commonwealth because the city has failed us as it failed our loved ones.
You can help end that ongoing injustice now. Urge the General Assembly to allocate the $40 million in requested funding to support the victims’ families and survivors of the Building 2 massacre.
It is late, but not too late to do the right thing.
Matthew Gayle is from Virginia Beach and resides in Westville, New Jersey. His mother, Mary Lou Gayle, was among the victims of the May 31, 2019, mass shooting in Virginia Beach.
