Bookkeeper Probably Wasn’t Focus of Assailant’s Anger : Crime: Those committing workplace violence rarely attack the people they’re most upset with, experts say. Karen LaBorde may have been ‘target of opportunity.’

Karen Marie LaBorde, the bookkeeper who died Tuesday after being set on fire, allegedly by a disgruntled janitor, may have been a “target of opportunity” and not the focus of her assailant’s rage, a behavior expert said.

“It is rare that a supervisor or the subject of a romantic obsession gets hurt,” Dr. Chris Hatcher, a clinical professor of psychology at the UC San Francisco, said Friday. “The person (assailants) focus the highest degree of anger on is rarely the one that ends up being killed or hurt.”

Instead, LaBorde, a mother of two, may have become a target of opportunity for the unprovoked attack for such mundane reasons as having eye contact that morning, or she was the employee who most often said hello to her alleged assailant, said Hatcher, who is also the psychologist for the San Francisco Police Department.

While few clinical studies have been done on the growing number of workplace assaults in the United States, Hatcher said it is likely that the suspect, Jonathan Daniel D’Arcy, gave many clues to co-workers and friends of his intentions.

But they weren’t taken seriously.

What is odd about workplace attacks is the assailant’s desire to be caught, said Dr. Louis Gottchalk, a professor of psychiatry at UC Irvine.

“He must have internalized the crime and the punishment, because how is he going to run away from this and hide when a lot of people saw him?” Gottchalk said.

D’Arcy, who is in County Jail, is charged with murder and torture but has yet to enter a plea. His arraignment is scheduled for Feb. 18.

Police said the 30-year-old D’Arcy, a custodian described as enraged over a late $150 paycheck from the custodial services firm where LaBorde worked, splashed gasoline over LaBorde after declaring, “I want my (expletive) money!” Police believe that D’Arcy then sparked the blaze with a cigarette lighter.

D’Arcy has told friends from jail that he doesn’t remember the incident.

D’Arcy and LaBorde appeared to have been merely acquaintances at Quintessence Building Maintenance, the custodial services company that occasionally hired D’Arcy as a contract janitor and had employed LaBorde as head bookkeeper.

D’Arcy had complained for months about Quintessence delaying his paychecks and cheating him out of money, according to the children of D’Arcy’s girlfriend. Despite repeated requests, company officials have declined to comment on those accusations.

While incidents of workplace violence are rising, little research has been done on the subject, the experts said. Hatcher referred to a 2-year-old study conducted by the U.S. Postal Service after several incidents involving disgruntled mail carriers and former employees ended in assaults and violence.

The study found the postal service had 300 cases of employees attacking supervisors and about 100 cases of supervisors beating up employees in a three-year period.

“These were actual attacks, not verbal confrontations,” Hatcher said, adding that the Postal Service has about 95,000 workers.

He said that people involved in revenge-arson crimes are people who feel that if they set fire to the person, their victims will “feel the burning pain” they psychologically have felt during their troubled lives.

“The use of accelerants is extremely rare compared to the use of firearms, which are more common,” Hatcher said.

Gottchalk and Hatcher said that even if D’Arcy warned others about what he intended to do, his logic might have been so skewed that he would not be taken seriously.

“Think about it,” Hatcher said. “If you come into your newsroom there or any office and say to a friend, ‘Bill. How’s it going?’ And he says, ‘I’ve been seriously thinking of taking my gun and killing the boss or the city editor.’ How would you respond?”

People do not want to believe that as a serious threat and usually turn away and ignore the person, even though the person had stated a plan of action of bodily harm to another person, Hatcher said.

Generally speaking, Hatcher said that people who commit violence in the workplace are in their 30s or 40s and have had some general degree of life’s success such as jobs, or they have earned money over a period of time. They have had cars, and have had a family or similar relationships.

In addition, they have a sense of how their world should be, but when economic conditions are upset, such as a change in pay or job status at the workplace, it becomes fundamentally not right. With a portion of their world upset, they start to believe that it eventually needs to be rectified, Hatcher said.

Many experts pointed to the poor economy and financial pressures that may have built up in D’Arcy’s life. He needed money to help pay an overdue mortgage payment. He had not been paid.