Warehouse killings bring new bout with old pain

Gail Wehrheim was watching Oprah at home Wednesday morning whenthe show was interrupted with a report on the slaughter at aBridgeport auto supply warehouse.

Marguerite Papenbrok didn't hear the news until hours later as shedrove home from work.

But both women were immediately consumed with the same searingpain, a pain they first felt more than two years ago in the lastworkplace massacre in the Chicago area, a pain that they knew wouldnow be shared by a fresh batch of families.

Wehrheim's husband Robert and Papenbrok's brother, Don Garcia,were among four killed and four wounded when William D. Baker went ona shooting rampage at the Navistar plant in Melrose Park in February2001.

"They say time heals all wounds, and I used to believe that,"Papenbrok told me Wednesday evening from home. "I don't think thiswill ever heal."

Most people around here had forgotten about the Navistar shootingsuntil Wednesday. I'll bet there aren't 5,000 people in the entireChicago area who could have named the guy who did the killings.

Baker ended up killing himself that day. Case closed. No mystery.No trial. When it ends that way, we in the news media turn the pageand move on--in a couple of weeks if not days. The world forgets.Nothing changes. Then it happens again, and we remember. For amoment. Just a moment, before the cycle starts again.

But Wehrheim and Papenbrok will tell you for a certainty that itwas a godsend for the families of those slain at Windy City CoreSupply that Salvador Tapia, the man who killed their loved ones, alsolost his life Wednesday when dropped by a police officer's bullet.

"Is the shooter dead?" Wehrheim asked me, having watched thecoverage but missed that key point in her grief. I assured her hewas. "I'm glad of that," she said.

"I think it's better that it ends this way for the family becausethen the family doesn't have to go to court and see him sittingthere. I know myself and my kids, we couldn't have gone to court,"said Wehrheim, 47, who still lives in Hanover Park.

Papenbrok, of Carpentersville, put it even more strongly.

"I'm glad that guy's dead. I'm glad the police killed him," shesaid. "If Baker was still alive, I'd want to kill him myself. I thinkjustice was served when police killed that other guy today. We won'thave to waste the taxpayers' money on a trial."

For Wehrheim and Papenbrok, they don't have to wait for a SalvadorTapia to kill six people in our media market to renew their pain.It's lurking there every day, but it comes flooding to the surfacewith every one of these workplace massacres or school shootings allover the country.

"You hear about it all the time, and it still brings everythingback," said Papenbrok, who started crying in her car when she heardthe news on the radio. "There will never be closure."

Both women, however, said their first thoughts were not of theirown lost loved ones but of the families of Wednesday's victims.

"I feel for the families knowing what they're going through andwhat they will be going through--and how one day they also will beforgotten," Wehrheim said.

Forgotten?

"It seems like maybe, I don't know, friends don't talk about itanymore. People don't come around as much. It was just so quick andover with the media," Wehrheim said.

She remembers hearing about the media circus outside Baker's homeafter the killings, about all the attention being paid to him and hisfamily, and she remembers being resentful.

"I was just, like, where is mine? What about focusing on thevictims' families?" she said. "I just feel forgotten sometimes."

I don't want anybody to take that wrong. Wehrheim wasn't lookingfor her 15 minutes of fame. She just was expressing the feeling thatmany victims have that we give more attention to the perpetrators ofa crime than those who get hurt.

Wehrheim is hoping to start a support group for crime victims inDuPage County.

But she's also interested in more pre-emptive solutions.

"We've got to stop the guns. It's going to happen again. It's justa matter of when," she said.

If that point of view irritates the gun crowd, I invite them todirect their anger at me instead of her. She doesn't deserve theabuse, and I'm used to it.

I realize the cause of these workplace killings is morecomplicated than just the ready availability of guns, but even thegun lovers would have to admit that the odds are that neither Bakernor Tapia would have caused as much damage if they could only gettheir hands on a knife.

The gun owners don't need to worry anyway.

Unless there's a wrinkle to Salvador Tapia's crime spree thathasn't surfaced yet, this will probably be over in a few days.

All but a few will forget. Nothing will change. And then in a fewmonths or a few years, it will happen again.