MANCHESTER, CONNECTICUT // A driver caught stealing beer from the warehouse where he worked agreed to resign his job yesterday then as "cold as ice," one of his victims said, went on a shooting rampage, killing eight people and injuring two before committing suicide. Omar Thornton pulled out a handgun after a meeting in which he was shown video evidence of the thefts and was offered the chance to quit or be fired.
"Then he went out on this rampage," company vice president Steve Hollander said. "He was cool and calm. He didn't yell. He was cold as ice. He didn't protest when we were meeting with him to show him the video of him stealing. He didn't contest it. He didn't complain. He didn't argue. He didn't admit or deny anything. He just agreed to resign. And then he just unexplainably pulled out his gun and started blasting."
Mr Hollander said he thinks Thornton, 34, had guns stashed in his lunch box. The executive said two people standing near him were shot in the head and killed, but he was only grazed in the jaw and the arm. "He shot at me twice and hit me a couple times," he said. "By just the grace of God, I don't know how he missed me." Mr Hollander was treated at Hartford Hospital and released. About 50 to 70 people were in the Hartford Distributors warehouse about 16 kilometres east of Hartford during a shift change when the gunman opened fire around 7am, said Brett Hollander, Steve Hollander's cousin and a member of the family that owns the distributorship.
"I was on the phone with 911 and then I saw him running outside of my office window, shooting his gun, carrying his lunch box, which must have had his weapons in it," Steve Hollander said. "It doesn't seem real to me now, it seems like I'm watching a movie." The shooting was over in a matter of minutes. The victims were found all over the complex, and authorities said they did not know if Thornton fired randomly or targeted specific co-workers.
After shooting his co-workers, Thornton called his mother, who tried for 10 minutes to talk him out of killing himself, his uncle Will Holliday told reporters. "He said, 'I killed the five racists that was there that was bothering me,"' Mr Holliday said. "He said, 'The cops are going to come in so I am going to take care of myself."' Thornton was alive when police got to the scene but killed himself before officers got to him, Manchester police chief Marc Montminy said. A police sharpshooter had approval to fire on Thornton when he killed himself, an official said.
* AP