Five employees at a small Orlando business were gunned down Monday morning by a former co-worker, who then fatally shot himself, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

The shooter, identified as 45-year-old Army veteran John Robert Neumann, Jr., was described by authorities as “disgruntled.” He was fired in April from Fiamma Awning, which manufactures awnings for RVs, authorities said.

Sheriff Jerry Demings said that Neumann arrived at the business a few minutes after 8 a.m. Four victims were found dead at the scene. A fifth person died of his injuries at a nearby hospital.

Neumann, who reloaded his semiautomatic handgun at least once during the rampage, did not have a concealed-weapons permit, authorities said. He had fatally shot himself by the time police arrived. There is no evidence that the attack was terrorism-related, the sheriff said.

The victims have been identified as Brenda Montañez-Crespo, 44; Kevin Lawson, 46; Kevin Clark, 53; Jeffrey Roberts, 57; and Robert Snyder, 69.

In June 2014, police were called to the same location after a report that Neumann had assaulted a fellow employee. No charges were filed at that time, the sheriff’s department said.

The shooting comes a week shy of the one-year anniversary of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub that left 50 people dead. Fiamma Awning is six miles away.

In 2014, the FBI published an analysis of 160 active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013. The report focused on shootings in which a gunman targeted people in a “confined and populated area” and left three or more people dead. It found that active shooters targeted businesses “more than 40 percent of the time.”

The FBI tally included all shootings that occurred inside a business, regardless of whether the shooter worked there.

The last workplace shooting that attracted national media attention occurred in February 2016, when a gunman shot 17 people, three fatally, at Excel Industries, a lawnmower factory in Hesston, Kansas. The shooter, a 38-year-old man named Cedric Ford, was an employee.

Last month, an 84-year-old man gunned down two of his nieces, 38 and 39, as they worked at a restaurant in Miami-Dade County, Florida. He then fatally shot himself.

Workplace shootings that don’t meet the FBI’s “active shooter” threshold happen several times a month. In April, a woman fatally shot her ex-boyfriend in the parking lot of the Tennessee auto parts plant where he worked. She also shot and wounded his friend.

Jennifer Mascia
Jennifer is a senior news writer and founding staffer at The Trace. She previously covered gun violence at The New York Times. In her decade on this beat, she’s covered community gun violence, the intersection of domestic violence and guns, and the growing role of firearms in public life.