On March 21, 1995, Robert Sarre Leslie, a 38-year-old white male, was one of four people killed in a shooting at the Watchung Plaza post office in Montclair, New Jersey. That afternoon Christopher Green, a onetime temporary postal employee who knew the branch’s layout, entered the small substation with a 9-millimeter handgun, ordered workers and customers to lie face down, and then shot several people at close range. A fifth man, David Grossman, was shot in the face and survived.

Green took just over five thousand dollars in cash and fled; a Postal Service driver discovered the bodies and the wounded survivor. Green was arrested within days and later pleaded guilty in June 1995 to the robbery and the shootings. A federal judge in Camden sentenced him to life in prison plus 25 years for the wounding of the surviving victim. Families, including Leslie’s, later pursued a civil suit alleging inadequate security at the post office.