On the night of July 15, 2015, a workplace dispute at a U.S. Airways flight training facility in Phoenix ended with the death of 34-year-old Eric Kunins. Kunins, a Black man and U.S. Air Force veteran who worked overnight as a flight simulator technician, got into an argument with a 52-year-old co-worker, George Hayes Jr., reportedly over a spare part or the placement of a lightbulb in the stockroom. The verbal dispute escalated into a physical altercation during which Hayes, who was holding a long screwdriver, said Kunins struck him; Kunins was stabbed once in the upper left side of his back and collapsed, later dying at a hospital.

Witness accounts differ on Hayes’s initial statements: one witness reported Hayes said Kunins had passed out and fallen on the screwdriver, while another co-worker reported Hayes said he had stabbed Eric. Hayes was interviewed by police and claimed he acted in self-defense; the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office reviewed the matter and declined to file murder charges, citing the possibility of self-defense and the burden of proof under Arizona law. Kunins’s family and supporters publicly protested the decision and sought further action, but no charges were filed.

What can readers add about the incident, the workplace environment that night, or people who might have witnessed what happened?