Scene at Lockheed emerges

By Kimm Montone & Laura Legere, The Times Tribune

From her office window, Deborah Bachak could see George Zadolnny leave his guard post every day and begin his security patrols at the Lockheed Martin plant where they both worked.

The view was the same when they dated, off and on for nearly a year, and in the months after the relationship ended.

During the best times, the two lived together at Ms. Bachak’s Mayfield home and Mr. Zadolnny gave her an engagement ring, friends and family said on Wednesday.

During the worst, Mr. Zadolnny’s temper flared and he moved back to his mother’s house in Taylor. He grew back the mustache he had shaved for Ms. Bachak and took painkillers for the arthritis that plagued his joints.

“Towards the end, I didn’t even know if they were talking,” his mother, Marilyn Zadolnny said. “I asked him, ‘You ever see Deb?’ He said, ‘I see her every day at work.’ ”

On Tuesday morning, hours after Mr. Zadolnny began his shift, he confronted Ms. Bachak in the Lockheed Martin mail room, shot her five times with his semi-automatic .40-caliber Glock pistol, then shot himself once in the head, police and the Lackawanna County Coroner’s Office said.

A day after, interviews with family, friends and law enforcement revealed a story of two lives lost and the scene inside the plant.

Victim was happy, beloved

The tragedy shocked family, friends and co-workers in the close-knit Mayfield community where Ms. Bachak, 46, grew up and where many residents work at the military defense plant.

“I loved her like a sister,” Barbara Palubniak, a family friend and co-worker of Ms. Bachak’s, said on Wednesday as she sat at the kitchen table in Ms. Bachak’s parents’ home. “Nobody had a word to say against her.”

Ms. Bachak worked as a document-control assistant at the plant, where she had been employed since 1982, company spokeswoman Heather Kelly said.

Family and friends described Ms. Bachak as a happy person, devoted to her two children and always willing to help friends and strangers. She had worked for months buying and renovating a Mayfield building where she planned to open Stay Home, a home health care facility for the elderly and disabled.

When the building’s other tenant, the Mayfield Diner, opened in October, Ms. Bachak helped arrange an 80-person lunch order from workers at Lockheed Martin.

Ms. Bachak’s own business was slated to open as soon as this week. On Wednesday, the Stay Home office was dark, as if the staff had stepped out: there was a stack of bound brochures by the phone and a purple tetra fish resting in its bowl.

Ms. Bachak’s mother, Jenny Sabric, said her daughter wanted to start the facility for her children, Michael, 21, and Mary Alicia, 16, both of whom want to be nurses.

“She just had that in her head, and she had to open up something for her children,” Mrs. Sabric said.

Ms. Palubniak, who until she retired worked with Ms. Bachak at Lockheed, said her friend always made co-workers smile. “She was as silly as could be,” she said, then added, “I can’t believe I’m saying, ‘she was, she was.’ ”

Shooter recently stressed

Mr. Zadolnny, 59, a West Scranton native, was a contracted security guard employed by Georgia-based U.S. Security Associates. Family said he worked at Lockheed Martin since he moved back to the region about five years ago after living for several decades in Alaska.

He always worked in security, his mother said: first doing ground security with the Air Force, then as a police officer and, for 20 years, as a guard for an oil pipeline in Alaska.

“He liked that kind of work.” Mrs. Zadolnny said.

Mr. Zadolnny was twice married and divorced, once briefly and once for 28 years. He never went to college, but he was very intelligent and handy around the house, his mother said.

His aunt, Delores Phelps, said he was a quiet man, but in recent months he had been moody with a quick temper. She and her sister attributed it to his relationship and the pain from his arthritis.

“I took his sickness into my mind a lot,” his mother said. “If you could have seen his dresser — just full of pain pills.”

His aunt thought his relationship with Ms. Bachak bothered him more than his pain.

“I think the biggest stress was the relationship,” she said. “He wanted her, but he couldn’t live with her.”

Although police have not explained the events immediately prior the shooting, the Lackawanna County Coroner’s Office said Wednesday that autopsies showed Ms. Bachak was shot five times and Mr. Zadolnny died from a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

How it happened

Police were dispatched to the scene at 9:40 a.m. Tuesday, following numerous reports of shots fired inside the building, according to the Lackawanna County Communications Center.

Archbald Patrolwoman Jamie Nolan, Mayfield Chief Joseph Perechinsky and Jermyn Chief Daniel Zellers pulled up to the plant at 459 Kennedy Drive within minutes, according to Chief Zellers.

An employee outside the building directed the police to the mail room, and the officers entered the plant with guns drawn, “prepared to engage in an active-shooter incident,” he said.

They found Ms. Bachak and Mr. Zadolnny dead in the small mail room. Police secured Mr. Zadolnny’s weapon and interviewed witnesses still in the building while other officers continued to converge on scene, Chief Zellers said.

Police also canvassed the site, where they encountered employees, some hiding under desks, Archbald Police Chief Tim Trently said.

A radio transmission also described a suspicious man in a plaid shirt outside of the plant, prompting officials to alert the nearby Valley View School District. School officials briefly locked down the campus.

“We’re a small town. With the way things are going, our small-town police department can no longer be small minded,” Chief Trently said.

A day after the tragedy, employees returned to work at the plant. It is part of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control which is a subsidiary of the parent company Lockheed Martin Corp., according to the spokeswoman Ms. Kelly.

At about 8 a.m. Wednesday, Lockheed Martin officials delivered a statement to express their deepest sympathies to friends and loved ones and also to let employees know that counseling is available at the facility all day and will continue as needed, Ms. Kelly said.

The company is conducting its own internal investigation into the events and is continuing to cooperate with investigators, she said.

“We are confident that the security procedures in effect at our facilities are appropriate to the threat level for each, as determined by the business units,” Ms. Kelly said. “At the same time, we continuously look for ways to improve our processes and will attempt to learn from this tragedy to further improve our security.”

Lockheed Martin has a zero-tolerance policy regarding violence in the workplace, and all employees are required to take annual harassment-free workplace and workplace-violence-prevention training to help identify and prevent this sort of incident, she said.

Although state police may conduct additional interviews, spokesman Trooper Bill Satkowski said they have completed the bulk of the investigation.