Law firm says Phoenix attorney has died from wounds in Wednesday's office shooting

Walter Berry / The Associated Press
February 1, 2013

This undated photo provided by the Osborn Maledon law firm shows Mark Hummels, who was critically wounded during a shooting at a Phoenix office building on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. Hummels is an attorney who represented the company involved in a contract dispute with the shooter, Arthur Douglas Harmon. (AP Photo/Osborn Maledon)

PHOENIX - A lawyer wounded by a gunman in a Phoenix office shooting this week has become the second victim to die in the attack, authorities said Friday.

Mark Hummels, 43, had been on life support after Wednesday morning's shooting that killed a company's chief executive and left a woman with non-life threatening injuries.

Hummels died Thursday night, a publicist for his law firm told The Associated Press early Friday.

Colleagues of Hummels described him as a smart, competent and decent man who was a rising star in his profession and dedicated to his wife, 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son.

The gunman — Arthur Douglas Harmon, 70 — was found dead early Thursday in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.

Police said Friday that they recovered two pistols believed used in the office shooting from Harmon's rental car along with an AR15 rifle.

Forensic research is being done to determine the owner of the weapons, said police spokesman Sgt. Tommy Thompson.

Harmon opened fire at the end of a mediation session at a north-central Phoenix office building over a lawsuit he filed last April.

Steve Singer, 48, a father of two and CEO of Fusion Contact Centers LLC, died hours after the shooting.

Harmon targeted Singer and Hummels and "it was not a random shooting," police said. A 32-year-old woman not involved in the mediation was caught in the gunfire near the building entrance and suffered a gunshot wound to her left hand.

Hummels worked with the Phoenix law firm Osborn Maledon and focused on business disputes, real estate litigation and malpractice defence. He died Thursday night, publicist Athia Hardt told The Associated Press early Friday.

He was a reporter for the Albuquerque Journal and Santa Fe New Mexican before he left to go to law school in 2001. He graduated first in his class at the University of Arizona's law school.