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LA county worker found dead at desk — one day later

February 15, 2011

A Los Angeles County worker died in her cubicle on Friday, but her body wasn’t discovered until Saturday afternoon. [KTLA]

Rebecca Wells, 51, was found slumped over her desk in the county Department of Internal Services in Downey by a security guard.

The exact time of death is not clear, but detectives say that, at worst, Wells had been dead for a day before her body was discovered.

Wells, a USC graduate, was a longtime compliance auditor, and had recently become a grandmother, according to co-workers.

Investigators have not determined the official cause of death, but they say foul play is not suspected.


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This is so sad. While many of ou joke about it happening in the public sector, I fear it’s a reflection of our society as a whole. No one cares about anyone anymore. And even if you do, you can’t let on, fraternization of any sort in the work place is frowned upon.


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LA County: Employee found slumped over her desk.


SLO County: Gail Wilcox found bent over her desk.


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So does her spouse qualify for workman’s compensation since she died on the job? When SLO’s fire chief died, city officials tried to file to get workman’s comp. awarded to his widow because he “died on the job” while playing softball. At least this woman was at her desk.


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They should have just waited till 5:00. They would have seen her get up and go home.


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Not hard to believe. It can be very difficult to distinguish the living from the dead in a government work place. I heard that there were 2 other bodies found that afternoon in the same office but it was later determined that they were “working” and not actually deceased.


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Ahhh, You don’t really expect the LA county coroner to say that a LA county employee was dead at her desk since lunch time, do you? No matter when she died the gubmint will never admit that one of their own was ignored for half a day while they appeared to be sleeping at their desk, that just ain’t gonna happen hotdog.


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Yes, this is a sad story, but there is also a dark gallows humor to it that rings true for anyone who has ever worked in the public sector anywhere.


This is government bureaucracy at its finest. This poor woman drops dead at her desk in some cubicle and everyone ignores her throughout the day.


A searing indictment of everything wrong with our system.


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and not for the less, she is ignored while slumped over her desk ! Oh yes, there is indeed a dark humor here, poor thing.


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May be too early to start throwing rocks at the gummint. Let’s see what happened first. Maybe she is always the last to leave, died at 5 pm while everyone was in a hurray to get away for the weekend (nothing special there and workers everywhere are always anxious to get away asap). No one comes in until Saturday to check things out as scheduled and there she is. Nothing in this story leads to any conclusions yet.


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“May be too early to start throwing rocks at the gummint.”


Maybe not, but how could someone dead not be noticed in an office full of employees, sitting in cubicles nearby? Oh, that’s right it was in an LA County office…


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You mean this could NEVER have happened in the private sector? I used to work in a cubicle where I was nothing more than an extension of my desk. Employers? Pay attention to your staff, no matter if you are paid by taxpayers or not.


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