BCBusiness

48 BCBusiness dECEMBER/JAnuARy 2018 yOuTuBE.COM/wATCh?V=MnVzlGOlqqw&T=207s given way to fevered preparation. "From the time we were dispatched to the time we reached VGH was 14 min- utes," Davies says. "Sometimes when we're having a beer with other para- medics, they want to call bullshit on that. 'Fourteen minutes, in an active shooter situation? Come on.'" Dr. Morad Hameed asks Dragan's wife, Ericka, for permission for a last- gasp procedure, a thoracotomy that will cut open her husband's breastplate. Hameed dismantles Dragan's chest like a Lego set and massages his heart by hand. "He told me later," Dragan says, "that it went thump... thump... thump thump thump thump. When they got that heartbeat, the entire mood in the trauma bay changed." When Dragan †nally reaches the operating room, the top of his lung is removed along with bullet fragments. He spends the next six days in an induced coma. "I went to get co‰ee, I woke up in the hospital a week later, and my wife told me I had been shot," Dragan says. "I looked down and there were all these tubes coming out of my chest. "Because I have no recollection of anything, I often feel like it happened to someone else and they switched me with that guy in the hospital," he adds. "It's like I'm Burt Reynolds, except some stunt double did the whole movie for me and I just stepped in to show my face at the end. Now I'm at the Academy Awards accepting congratulations. It's a bit surreal." Apparently killing Paul Dragan had only been step one in Battersby's plan—his former roommate and Ericka Dragan were to be next. A personal day planner recovered outside Science World con- tained an entry dated June 9: "Kill—Joel G., Paul D. and Erika [sic] D.... Adios assholes." The phrase "death by cop" was also noted. Eventually Battersby would plead guilty to three counts of attempted murder (for Dragan, Mancin and D'Andrea—shooting at Berda and Griœths didn't even make that list) and two †re- arms o‰ences. In October 2016, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. t here's often a desire to draw lessons from such a traumatic event—How Not to Be Shot by a Maniacal Employee. Dragan is reluctant. "It was such an anomaly," he says. "I would expect a disgruntled employee to key my car, throw a rock through the window, write 'Paul Dragan is an asshole' on the door, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect something so severe." But is there any way to spot this kind of serious trouble developing? Cori Maedel, founder and CEO of Vancouver-based HR consulting †rm Jouta Performance Group, believes there may be lessons. "As employ- ers, it's our duty to inquire about changes in behaviour," Maedel says. She warns against ignoring signs of stress and trouble in an employee's life. "Don't avoid it and hope it will go away," Maedel says. "Talk about it before it escalates." Dragan's situation with Battersby was more complex because it had ceased to be simply a workplace issue—he had become Battersby's land- lord. "I suppose my mistake was trying to help him †nd a place to live," Dragan admits. "However well-intentioned, intervention in an employee's personal life can have consequences," Maedel says. "I consulted with one business that planned to lend an employee $150,000. What if it goes wrong? You need to be very careful about crossing that line from the professional into the personal." The Integrity Group's MacKenzie recom- mends that employers obtain workplace threat assessments from companies like Lions Gate Risk Management Group and ProActive ReSolutions Inc., or contact WorkSafeBC for free expert advice. And, if necessary, they should call the cops. "Lis- ten to your gut," MacKenzie says. "There will be situations where an employee is experiencing problems, perhaps with a persistent customer or a disgruntled spouse. You can't ignore it. No one is going to blame you if you call the police and say, 'These are my concerns about the situation.'" MacKenzie also suggests making plans for sce- narios ranging from employee violence to rob- bery. "Equip your space," she says. "Do you have a panic button? Do you have security cameras that are properly angled to see faces? Do you have a proper money transfer process?" Although MacKenzie agrees that the Battersby case falls outside the normal realm of workplace violence—"It's almost more of a domestic violence situation"—she believes there are still lessons for employers. "Boundaries are important," she stresses. "Work is not just about tasks. It's about respectful interactions." Not surprisingly, the experience has a‰ected Dragan's approach. "I am more guarded about the help that I give," he concedes. "My wife says, 'Don't hire any more nutcases, Paul.' I say, 'You don't understand the bike business.' But she's right. There's a rule in retail: hire slowly, ªire quickly. We were probably doing the reverse." About six weeks after the shooting, police oœ- cers Berda and Griœths paid a visit to Dragan's "I don't know what I expected to see. A guy in a hospital bed, perhaps. We come in, and he's up and doing some business at his computer. He says, 'Be with you in a sec'" — Christopher Berda, Vancouver Police detective FIRING OFFENCE Gerald Battersby (shown here in a surveillance video) was convicted of three counts of attempted murder

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