LOS ANGELES, Jan. 31 (Xinhuanet) -- A former postal worker in California went on a shooting spree overnight, killing five people before she committed suicide, authorities said Tuesday.

    Local police and federal agencies were investigating the scene of the carnage, a mail processing plant in a usually peaceful town of the coastal Santa Barbara county about 150 kilometers northwest of Los Angeles.

    Officials said the shooter was a former employee who had been removed from the facility in 2003 by law enforcement officials after complaints from other employees, according to a website report of the Los Angeles Times newspaper.

    The 44-year-old woman, whose name was not released, received apsychological medical disability, said Randy Degasperin, a postal inspector, who represented the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the post office's police arm.

    No physical threats were involved but her co-workers wanted the woman to receive help, he said, adding that the woman, who was apart-time distribution clerk, took another job.

    The incident was the deadliest shooting in the workplace in the United States since 2003, when a 48-year-old man gunned down 14 co-workers, killing six, at a Lockheed Martin aircraft parts plant in Mississippi before killing himself. Enditem