Law enforcement is investigating workplace problems as motive in Navy Yard killings

WASHINGTON – The gunman who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday began his rampage by heading directly to the fourth floor, where he shot people who worked with him, and authorities are investigating whether a workplace problem sparked the killings, according to law enforcement officials and witness accounts.

People in the department where Aaron Alexis was working had concerns about his job performance, and investigators are looking into whether those concerns escalated last week, the officials said.

"He was not doing a very good job, and somebody told him that there was a problem," one law enforcement official said. "Our belief is that the people who were shot first were people he had issues with where he worked, people he had some sort of a dispute with. After that, it became random … After the first shootings in that office, he moved around and shot people he came upon. They were then targets of opportunity."

Alexis, a former Navy reservist who had recent problems with mental illness, was employed by a company contracted to upgrade computers at the Navy Yard.

Workers and law enforcement officials said Alexis worked on the fourth floor, where the shootings began. Although the investigators say they do not know the exact order in which the victims were shot, they said the rampage started in an area of people who would have worked with him.

The officials cautioned that they are still trying to learn more about the severity of the dispute and whether it was an impetus for the shootings.

The law enforcement officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is in its early stages. Three of the officials said most of the victims on the fourth floor were shot at close range and in the head.

Investigators noted that the shootings began on the floor where Alexis worked and not in the open lobby or the top floor where he could have fired down into the atrium below.

"We're attempting to understand as best we can his life up until the moment of that shooting, which would include trying to understand whether there were any issues related to work," FBI Director James Comey said Thursday at a briefing with reporters.

The new FBI director said he viewed a surveillance video of parts of the shooting. "It appears to me that he was wandering the halls and hunting people to shoot."

Washington Post