Police identify 2 men allegedly attacked by co-worker at Chandler Intel facility

CHANDLER, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — One person is dead, another is hospitalized, and a man is in custody after an assault involving co-workers in Chandler on Saturday morning.

Police were called to the Intel Ocotillo campus near Dobson and Ocotillo Roads for a reported assault involving a man with a hatchet around 6:15 a.m. Officers arrived and found 50-year-old Derrick Lemond Simmons in front of the building carrying two duffle bags. Police say Simmons told the officers that they were looking for him.

When officers entered the building, they found Dan Foster, 49, who had died from blunt-force trauma injuries in the cafeteria. Another victim, identified as 27-year-old Jaron Williams, had non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to a hospital. “We do know that they were both employees here, and they were co-workers,” said Sgt. Emma Huenneke, the Chandler Police Department Public Information Officer.

Witnesses told police that after the night shift employees left, Simmons allegedly approached Foster at a table in the cafeteria and hit him multiple times on the head with a baseball bat, court papers say. According to court paperwork, Williams was sitting with Foster and stood up to confront the attacker when he was intentionally hit in the back of the head by Simmons with the same bat.

Simmons then went back and continued to hit Foster, then switched to a hatchet to continue hitting him. After multiple strikes, he switched to stabbing Foster with a knife. Simmons was not injured in his attack and investigators found blood on his clothes and shoes, court papers say.

Police papers say they found a bag Simmons brought with him into the facility at the scene full of various tools he wouldn’t use for his job. On the day of the incident, he was scheduled to work in another building and had no reason to be in the same area as Foster or Williams, papers say. Foster and Simmons had previous arguments, forcing to two to be separated into different work areas of the company which investigators say gives them cause to believe it was a premeditated crime.

Arizona’s Family reached out to Intel regarding this incident and received this response:

Simmons was arrested and charged with 1st-degree murder and aggravated assault. He was previously convicted in 2001 for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He’s being held on a one-million-dollar bond.

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