Melvin Lee, 58, a Native Hawaiian from Waipahu, was one of seven Xerox employees killed on November 2, 1999, when a semiautomatic handgun turned a routine workday at the company’s Honolulu facility on North Nimitz Highway into Hawaii’s deadliest workplace shooting. Lee had worked at Xerox for nearly three decades and was described as a soft-spoken field manager in customer service who was nonconfrontational and nearing retirement. He left behind his wife, Ann.

The man identified as the shooter was Xerox service technician Byran Koji Uyesugi, who reportedly arrived at work that morning, opened fire, then fled in a company van. Police later located him near the Hawaii Nature Center above downtown Honolulu, where he held officers at bay for hours before surrendering and was taken into custody the same day. An Oahu grand jury quickly indicted him on first-degree murder and related counts; at trial a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, specifically naming Melvin Lee among the dead, and the court imposed life without parole on the first-degree count.

Court testimony during the proceedings included accounts of years of tension and alleged threats between employees, including testimony that Lee had warned a co-worker to stay home in 1993 because Uyesugi had threatened his life. For Lee’s family and co-workers, the legal outcome could not restore what was lost.