On February 9, 1996, Mark A. Bretz—a 36-year-old white male city beach-maintenance worker from Fort Lauderdale—was shot and killed during a workplace mass shooting at the Fort Lauderdale beach operations trailer near Las Olas. The gunman, 41-year-old Clifton McCree, a former coworker who had been fired in December 1994 after failing a drug test and allegedly threatening colleagues, entered the small municipal trailer around dawn and opened fire on the crew.
Five city employees were killed, including the victim, Mark A. Bretz and a sixth employee was critically wounded. McCree died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Contemporaneous reports identified the deceased as Joseph Timothy Clifford Joseph Belotto Kenneth A. Brunjes and Donald Moon Jr. alongside Mark A. Bretz. The only survivor of the immediate attack was coworker Lelan “Joe” Brookins, who was gravely injured but lived for years with complications before his death in 2006. Coverage at the time explicitly noted that the victims—including Mark A. Bretz —were white, a detail repeatedly cited in local retrospectives on the case.
According to investigators, the shooter, McCree, had worked roughly 18 years for the city's beach crew before his termination on December 4, 1994, for testing positive for illegal drugs while on duty. After losing his job, he voiced animosity toward former coworkers. Witness accounts describe McCree bursting into the trailer and declaring that everyone was going to die before firing multiple rounds; a suicide note was later reported in media summaries of the case. These details help establish the context for the killing of Mark A. Bretz as part of a premeditated act of retaliatory workplace violence.
No arrests were made in connection with the death of Mark A. Bretz. The identified suspect, Clifton McCree, died by suicide immediately after the shooting, closing the criminal case without prosecution. Public records and memorial sources confirm Mark A. Bretz's identity and age at death and place of death on February 9, 1996.
