On June 12, Joey McLean, a City of Las Vegas maintenance worker, was shot and killed at his worksite. The coworker charged with killing him, Brysen Kim, has pleaded not guilty and is set for trial early next year.
Months earlier, McLean had written to his HR department. He said he was being stalked and threatened, and that Kim had access to a firearm. His words:
“I am afraid for my life.”
This didn’t come out of nowhere. It was documented. For months. Let me walk you through what actually happened, what HR did, and where they could have done more. The gap between those last two is the whole lesson.
What actually happened
This started in February. Kim filed the first HR complaint against McLean on February 12, raising concerns about truck tailgate operations he saw as possible sabotage, plus harassment and inappropriate messaging. The same day, McLean asked for a transfer.
From there it escalated in both directions. McLean filed his own complaints against Kim. He alleged he was being stalked outside of work, that he was being threatened, and that Kim had a firearm. That’s where the “afraid for my life” line came from.
So this wasn’t one bad actor and one clear victim. Both men were reporting each other. Both were on HR’s radar. For months.
What HR did
Give the city credit for this much. They didn’t ignore it.
They opened investigations. They interviewed nine employees. They placed McLean on paid administrative leave during one investigation. They issued a formal written reprimand. When Kim reached out in June, an HR manager connected him with a behavioral health clinician. A deputy city manager set up a meeting with him. A second disciplinary hearing for McLean was scheduled for June 15.
On paper, that’s a lot of activity. Investigations, interviews, leave, reprimands, referrals, hearings. If you measured HR by how much they documented, they’d pass.
That’s exactly the problem. Documentation isn’t protection.
What HR could have done more
Here’s where it falls apart.
Through all of it, the two men stayed on the same shifts. Supervisors handed them separate tasks so they wouldn’t work side by side. According to the city’s own timeline, they worked the same shift more than two dozen times after the complaints started.
Sit with that. A worker put it in writing that he feared for his life. He named the coworker. He mentioned a gun. And the response was to keep both men reporting to the same yard, the same hours, and count on the daily task list to keep them apart.
Separate tasks are not separation. Not when someone tells you a firearm is in the picture. That situation called for different shifts, different locations, real distance, right then. Not a to-do list.
There were other moves on the table too. McLean asked for a transfer more than once. It was declined. When you’ve got documented threats and a request to get away from the person making them, granting that transfer stops being a scheduling favor. It becomes a safety decision.
None of this needed a crystal ball. Everything HR needed to act on was already sitting in the file. This is employee relations at its highest stakes, and the highest stakes are exactly when a paper trail isn’t enough.
This is a legal duty, not a nice-to-have
A lot of small business owners think workplace safety law is about hard hats and wet floors. It’s bigger than that, and it lands right in the middle of HR compliance.
OSHA’s General Duty Clause requires you to keep your workplace “free from recognized hazards” that are likely to cause death or serious physical harm. Once an employee hands you documented threats, that danger becomes a recognized hazard. Now it’s yours to deal with. The city says it’s waiting on a report from OSHA. That tells you where this is headed.
What this means for your business
You don’t need thousands of employees for this to reach you. If you’ve got a team, you’ve got this risk.
Three things to put in place this month.
Write a real workplace violence policy. Name what counts, how someone reports it, and what happens next.
Train your managers to see the warning signs. Threats. Fixation on one person. Talk of weapons. A pattern that keeps climbing. The people closest to your team need to know what they’re looking at.
Build a complaint process that ends in action, not a folder. When someone reports a real threat, your team should know what to do in the first hour. That includes the authority to separate people fast, before the paperwork is finished.
HR did a lot here. It still wasn’t enough, because none of it put distance between two people who needed to be apart. If a worker handed you that same note tomorrow, would your business move faster? Or would you also end up with a full file and an empty plan?
Want help building a workplace violence policy and a complaint process that actually protects your people? A fractional HR partner can put this in place before you ever need it. Schedule a free 30-minute discovery call with us at baezco.com/contact-us.