Man charged with murder in fatal shooting at Pennsylvania linen company

A man has been charged with murder Thursday after a shooting left 2 dead and 3 others injured in what prosecutors described as a "cold-blooded" attack at a linen company near Philadelphia.

Wilbert Rosado-Ruiz, 61, has been charged with two counts of homicide, multiple counts of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and a firearms charge, according to Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer. He was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday afternoon, Stollsteimer said.

Rosado-Ruiz was charged in connection to a shooting that occurred Wednesday morning at Delaware County Linen in Chester, a city south of Philadelphia. The family-owned company was founded in 1988 and provides linen rental and laundering services to businesses in southeastern Pennsylvania and surrounding states, its website said.

Stollsteimer said the shooting appeared to stem from a dispute between Rosado-Ruiz and a female colleague. It was unclear what led to the dispute between the suspect and his co-worker, authorities said.

Two brothers, identified as Leovanny Pena Pena and Giguenson Pena Pena, were killed and three others — including the colleague involved in the dispute — were wounded, authorities said. As of Thursday afternoon, two of the surviving victims were listed in stable condition while one was in critical condition but stable.

"This is a horrible, horrible event (that) should never happen," Stollsteimer said at a news conference Thursday. "As I said yesterday, (shootings happen) too often in America. It could have happened in any community but it happened, unfortunately, here in the city of Chester."

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Gunman 'methodically' walked around, shooting victims

The shooting happened at about 8:30 a.m. and Chester Police Commissioner Steven Gretsky said officers arrived at a "very chaotic scene." They found one man dead outside the business entrance and another dead inside.

According to Stollsteimer, surveillance video showed Rosado-Ruiz arriving at the business and having a verbal altercation with a female employee. He then went outside to make a phone call, returned with a gun, and opened fire.

"He methodically walked around the floor of the business," Stollsteimer said.

The female colleague was the first victim in the incident and left the building after she was shot, according to Stollsteimer. As Rosado-Ruiz was leaving the building, he noticed the woman and fired several more shots but either misfired or ran out of ammunition, Stollsteimer added.

Rosado-Ruiz then fled from the scene but was soon taken into custody after an officer from nearby Trainer, Pennsylvania, heard the vehicle description and stopped the car, Gretsky said.

Stollsteimer added that although Rosado-Ruiz legally owned the gun that was used in the shooting, he faced a weapons charge because he did not have a license to carry a concealed weapon.

Latest workplace shooting in U.S.

There have been at least 168 mass shootings in the country so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun violence incidents. The organization defines mass shootings as shootings in which at least four people have been shot, not including the shooter, regardless of whether they die.

Mass killings, as defined by a tracker from USA TODAY, Northeastern University, and the Associated Press, include incidents in which four or more people, excluding the offender, are killed within a 24-hour time frame. There have been 15 such killings in 2024, according to the tracker.

The Chester, Pennsylvania, shooting is also the latest incident of workplace violence carried out by disgruntled workers or former employees. Assault is the fifth-leading cause of workplace deaths, according to the National Safety Council.

Between 2021 and 2022, the public service organization counted over 57,600 injuries. In 2022, there were 525 fatalities reported due to assault.

Last year, seven people were killed in two related shootings in Half Moon Bay, California, in what authorities described as an "instance of workplace violence." In June 2022, three people were killed and three others injured — including the gunman — at a Maryland manufacturing facility.

About five months later, a gunman, who a witness said was targeting co-workers, killed six people at a Walmart in Virginia. In 2021, a former employee at a FedEx facility in Indiana killed eight people.

Though multiple workplace killings by employees have occurred in recent years, experts have said these incidents are comparatively rare when looking at all U.S. mass killings, USA TODAY reported in 2022.

"In terms of workplace homicides, most are actually committed not by employees," James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor at Northeastern University, previously told USA TODAY.

Contributing: Jeanine Santucci and Nada Hassanein, USA TODAY