EDMOND, Okla. -- Postal workers who survived a massacre that left 15 of their co-workers dead returned to work today, fighting back tears and sharing their sorrow as they waited on customers.
'It's like they're on vacation,' Steve Brehm, 47, said of the victims shot down Wednesday by Patrick Sherrill, who opened fire in an apparent rage over the prospect of losing his job. Sherrill killed himself when police stormed the building.
'You keep expecting these people (the victims) to show up for work,' Brehm said.
'Everybody just kind of hugged each other and talked among ourselves,' Brehm said of the workers who reported for duty today. 'I think people who were involved (in the shooting) were just kind of quiet.'
'Some of them aren't doing real well,' he said.
Asked why he returned to his job today -- workers were given the option of staying home -- Brehm replied, 'Nobody else can do this.'
A professional cleaning crew removed blood stains from the floor and walls and all evidence of the nation's third-worst mass shooting had disappeared by the time employees reported for work.
Despite the eerie calm that prevailed, Brehm said there still were places in the U-shaped building he could not go because he knew people had been killed there.
'There are certain areas I can't work in,' he said.
The post office flag was at half staff, as were flags at all Oklahoma state buildings, several businesses and other post office facilities nationwide.
Another employee, Bill Porter, said several customers who came into the building told him they were glad to see him. 'I guess they mean they're glad I made it,' he said.
A light rain fell on customers who came to the post office and Brehm said several of them wished him well, 'sort of like they were glad I was alive.'
Sherrill, described as a reclusive ex-Marine, was the object of an intense investigation by federal and state law officers trying to find the trigger that unleashed the rage.
'You look at the carnage and you look at the dead people as you walk through,' said Oklahoma County District Attorney Robert Macy. 'You become so angry, you'd like to walk through and shoot him.
'What makes a man do something like that? God only knows. That's what we're trying to find out.'
America's third-worst killing spree by a lone gunman began shortly after doors swung open for the Wednesday morning shift at the Edmond post office, where the 44-year-old Sherrill was a part-time carrier.
Sherrill had been chewed out the day before, called a slacker. This day he was there on time, entering through the east door, one of the few left unlocked.
But he carried a grudge. And three loaded pistols -- one, a .45-caliber semi-automatic he had checked out the day before from his Oklahoma Air National Guard unit. The guns he hid in his leather carrier's pouch, along with clips of oversized 'wad cutter' bullets used for target practice but which could tear a fist-sized hole in a man's chest.
His first victim was one of the supervisors who had threatened to fire him the day before; Sherrill held the job a scant 18 months and he was not about to lose it. He had lost too many jobs, mostly because he could not handle them.
But he could handle guns. He was a crack shot, who taught in the National Guard. And he used the weapons, popping off shots patiently, methodically, like a hunter in a warren of cornered rabbits.
He did not waste many bullets and he did not speak. The ordeal lasted less than 20 minutes. The victims were found jammed up against the edges of plastic cubicles, piled five high in one spot; one man died in the parking lot. In addition to the 15 killed, seven were wounded but survived.
One of the wounded, William Nimmo, was in critical condition today.
Three employees locked themselves safely in a vault, listening to the moans of the dying.
Moments before police burst into the building, Sherrill positioned himself in the middle of a horseshoe-shaped sorting area and put a bullet in his head, finishing at the center of the drama.
'He just started shooting people,' recalled Vince Furlong, 32. 'He shot the supervisor (Rick Esser) almost point-blank. He shot one of my best friends almost point-blank. And then he just turned around and started spraying the room.'
'He was an evil man,' said Mike Bigler, who was wounded in the back. 'He was never going to do well in his work. He knew it. He was a loner, a stranger even to his closest friends.'
He was more than a loner, friends and neighbors said. He was a time bomb waiting to go off. He had lost a series of jobs since leaving the Marines in 1966. Each job was a comedown from the last, at least in his opinion.
At the post office in Edmond, a suburb of 34,600 north of Oklahoma City, he earned less than $14,000 a year.
'Nothing seemed to suit him,' said Ken Goddard, a fellow ham radio operator and associate of 15 years. 'He used to gripe about this or that. Not big things, but gripes nevertheless. He was something of a perfectionist.'
He was obsessed with guns. He collected and cherished them. He loved guns more than people, neighbors said. When police searched his home in northwest Oklahoma City they found stacks of ammunition, gun books of every type, a fancy engraved shotgun, an M-1 military-issue rifle, and braces of target pistols.
'We're looking for reasons why all this rage would suddenly explode,' said police spokesman Mike Wooldridge. 'We know the killing is done, but we want to know why. We're talking to his neighbors, his friends, anybody who might shed some light. That's why we searched the home and seized the guns.'
For Sherrill, guns gave him an importance few other things imparted. He tried and failed to establish a relationship with a woman. He tried and failed to go to Vietnam as a Marine. He tried and failed to get a college degree -- attending Oklahoma University, Central State University and Oklahoma City Southwestern.
He tried and failed to hold a steady job. In rapid succession, he had worked for the Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Postal Service -- the earlier stint lasted only 89 days -- and with the city of Oklahoma City where he was briefly employed fixing stop lights.
'He hated most of those things,' said Goddard. 'They were beneath his talents he felt.'
The carnage was the worst to be committed by a single man since since July 18, 1984, when James O. Huberty opened fire at the bordertown McDonald's restaurant in San Ysidro, Calif., killing 21 people.
In 1966, 16 people were killed and 31 wounded in a rifle barrage from a University of Texas tower in Austin by Charles J. Whitman.
Huberty and Whitman both were killed by police.
Besides Esser, 38, police identified Sherrill's victims as Betty Jarred, 34, Patty Husband, 49, Tom Shader, 31, Mike Rockne, 33, Patty Gabbard, 47, Johna Gragert Hamilton, 30, Patti Welch, 27, Judy Denney, 39, Patty Chambers, 41, Kenneth Morey, 49, Bill Miller, 30, Lee Phillips, 42, and Jerry Pyle, 51.
