Pensacola, Florida
The authorities said that a man who drove his car to the Wal-Mart distribution center in northern California and emerged from the shooting that killed him and another man and wounded four others, was fired from his work at the center last year.
Sheriff Phil Johnston, Thama County aide, told a news conference early Sunday that Louis Wesley Lane, 31, had been expelled from the distribution center near Red Bluff in February 2019 after failing to come to work.
The violence started on Saturday afternoon when a man with a semi-automatic rifle turned around the car park four times before hitting the lobby of the building. Sharif’s office said that Lynn started shooting indiscriminately at the building and in the parking area, where he got involved with Red Bluff police officers who were the first to arrive at the scene.
Johnston said they exchanged 20 to 30 rounds before the police fired him.
The employee who died is Martin Harrow Lozano, 45, from Orlando, California. Johnston said that the sheriff’s deputy had taken him to hospital because of his injury, but he later died. His relationship with the shooter was not immediately known.
Haro-Lozano was a 12-year-old employee who had family and friends working at the same facility, according to John Forner, president and CEO of Walmart U.S.
“We were shocked and sorry for the terrible event that happened,” he said in a statement.
Johnston said that the shooting victims were taken to the St. Elizabeth Community Hospital and their injuries were not life-threatening.
He said that another victim was hit by the shooter’s car while he was driving in the building and was being treated in hospital.
Johnston said that, unlike his previous work at the center, investigators did not specify the motive for the shooting.
Some workers told KHSL-TV that some of the 200 workers inside the facility locked themselves in a room.
Scott Thamakhant, an employee at the facility’s reception center, told Redding Record-Searchlight that he heard the shooting.
“It went on and on – I don’t even know how many times I fired it,” said Tamakhanti. “I know it was too much.”
Thamakhanti and others started running for their lives, and he saw people lying on the ground while running, he said.
The employee, his colleague Franklin Lester, told the New York Times that he just started work when a coworker ran into the hallway shouting: “Active shooting! Active shooter!”
Vince Creek told Record-Searchlight that his wife and son were working at the facility and he was on his way to pick up his wife when he saw the fire. The newspaper said that neither of them was hurt, but his wife told him not to come to the front entrance.
“It was real madness, because, you know, you can’t do anything,” said Crick.
Senders told Record-Searchlight that at least one woman was shot. A man also said that his leg had been run over when the shooter collided with a car in the building, but the man was not sure whether he had been shot, as messengers said.
