At a candlelight vigil for three St. Paul apartment management employees, a resident reflected on the suddenness of the workplace violence that caused their deaths.

“I keep thinking how they went to work … went through their whole day not knowing that this was going to be their final destination,” said Ashley Chester, who organized the vigil the day after they were killed in Highland Park on Monday.

There were 470 homicides at workplaces around the United States in 2024, which was about 9 percent of work fatalities, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The most common type of workplace fatalities were crashes — 1,937 workers died in transportation incidents in 2024.“Most people killed on the job in this country (in homicides) are killed by strangers during robberies,” such as convenience store clerks, drivers and late-shift retail workers, said James Densley, Metropolitan State University School of Criminology and Criminal Justice professor and department chair.

Robbery was not the alleged motive in Monday’s tragedy that took the lives of Nansi G. Fuentes Zambrano, 25; Dena M. Silcox, 56; and Adam “AJ” Wilwerding, 43.

After a resident tried unsuccessfully to cancel his apartment parking garage contract, police and prosecutors said he went to the leasing office at the Davern Park Apartments on St. Paul Avenue, off West Seventh Street, and fatally shot the three workers late Monday afternoon. He was arrested about 200 miles north of the crime scene on Monday night and is charged with three counts of murder.

Assaults, threats against frontline workers

The research of the Violence Prevention Project, which Densley co-founded with Hamline University criminology and criminal justice professor Jillian Peterson, includes mass shootings and workplace homicides.

In mass shootings, which the project defines as four or more victims killed with a firearm in a public place, they’ve found the most common motivation was interpersonal conflict. In workplace homicides carried out by a former or current employee, escalation of a dispute was most often cited as the reason.

“Homicide is still the rarest thing that happens to a frontline worker,” Densley said. “Fatal numbers are flat to falling.”

Non-fatal injuries “are a different story,” Densley said. “Ask retail clerks, nurses, bus drivers and flight attendants what the last five years have felt like at the counter. Assaults, threats and abuse against public-facing workers have gone up on nearly every measure that tracks them.”

Scott Ficek, president of the National Association of Residential Property Managers’ Minnesota chapter, has been working in the industry for more than 20 years and said “it’s very rare to have physical violence” against apartment management employees.

“In any business where you’re interacting with people, there is opportunity for there to be conflict, especially in a field or situation when you’re talking about money owed or someone’s housing,” he said. “When you’re talking about a place where someone lives, obviously that can be a little more emotionally charged.”

Ficek said he hasn’t noticed changes in his line of work in particular, but has felt that “society in general is just a bit more aggressive.”

“Were people getting frustrated over cold fries and getting into physical altercations at McDonald’s with workers over it 20 years ago? I don’t know that you heard about that,” Ficek said.

Densley, the Metro State professor, noted that nearly everyone now takes videos with their cellphones.

“A screaming customer in 2006 was just a bad shift,” he said. “A screaming customer in 2026 is a viral video for everyone on social media to consume. Some of what feels like escalation is visibility.”

‘Absolutely concerning’

Minnesota’s deadliest workplace violence was in 2012, when a recently fired employee of Accent Signage in Minneapolis fatally shot six people, including the business’s owner, other workers and a visiting UPS driver.

After Monday’s triple homicide in St. Paul, Ficek said he talked to his team.

“It’s absolutely concerning, very tragic,” he said, adding that the violence made his employees concerned. “I think anybody should be concerned when there is a crime that happens related to where they live, the occupation they’re in or where they go on a daily basis. It makes you think twice about your surroundings and your safety.”

Angie French, president of Mid Continent Management Corp., described Monday’s victims as “long-term, dedicated property management professionals.”

Fuentes Zambrano was the leasing agent, Silcox was the assistant manager and Wilwerding was the community manager.

After the homicides, other apartment staff members reported that Tsegaab Ademassu Binessu, 30, had called to cancel his $65-a-month parking garage contract, which he’d recently renewed. He lived about a block away, in an apartment building run by the same management company.

Binessu told the person he talked to on the phone that he was going to come and talk about the situation in person, though the call taker told him the outcome would be no different.

“Binessu went to the leasing office a short time after that phone call, and he executed” the three workers, said the criminal complaint against him.

Binessu later told investigators he sold his car that day because he planned on joining the military, so he no longer needed his parking spot.

Bail was set at $10 million during a short hearing Wednesday. An attorney for Binessu could not be reached for comment.

The three victims are remembered as a beloved daughter, a natural mother and a best friend:

Nansi Fuentes Zambrano

At Garlough Environmental Magnet School in West St. Paul, “Nansi was quiet, observant, curious, goal driven, hard working and above all, KIND,” wrote Sue Powell, who retired as the school’s principal. “She was a friend to all, the type of student every teacher wants in their classroom, because people like Nansi make life better for everyone around them.”

Friends from Henry Sibley High School (now Two Rivers High School) in Mendota Heights remembered the 25-year-old’s love of music and dancing.

“I’ll never understand why it had to be you but I’d pick you as my best friend in this life and the next in a heart beat,” a friend wrote on social media.

Fuentes Zambrano, of Inver Grove Heights, was “a beloved daughter, sister, aunt to three wonderful children, and devoted girlfriend,” said a fundraising website for her family at supportnow.org/nansi-g-fuentes-zambrano. “… Her kindness also reached the community where she lived and worked. At a very young age, she achieved many of her goals, including fulfilling one of her mother’s biggest dreams: providing her with a home.”

Dena Silcox

Silcox, a mother of four and grandmother of two who lived in St. Paul, was a “natural mother to everyone,” said her brother, Erik Silcox.

“She was our first child, a beautiful child, and she did all the right things,” said her father, Bob Silcox. “Going to school, working and raising kids. Doing what she should be doing and then got killed for it.”

The 56-year-old’s husband died several years ago from a medical condition and she became a “struggling single parent,” said her mother, Sharon Silcox. “The kids have lost both parents.”

Silcox’s children, “who meant the world to her, are facing this unimaginable time with bravery and love,” said a fundraiser for her family at gofundme.com/f/support -denas-children-after -tragic-loss.

AJ Wilwerding

Wilwerding’s sister, Suzy Post, said he was her “best friend, my rock and my biggest cheerleader.”

“Under that big burley man was a heart of pure gold,” she said in a statement.

Wilwerding, 43, graduated from Mounds View High School in 2001. He met the love of his life, Jenna, when they were teens and they were together for more than 25 years.

Post described Wilwerding, of Oakdale, as “a big momma’s boy,” writing that he and their mother “have a bond so unbreakable and so special.” To Post, his big sister, he was “a protective and proud brother.”

His niece and nephews “were his world” and “AJ was the fun uncle,” Post added. “To our dad, he was his poker and golf partner.”