A shooting on Saturday by a former worker at a Walmart distribution center in Red Bluff, Calif., left an employee dead and several others injured, the authorities said.
Police officers killed the gunman, a 31-year-old man identified as Louis Lane, Lt. Yvette Borden, a spokeswoman for the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office, said. Mr. Lane had worked at the distribution center in February 2019 but was let go for failing to show up for his shift, the lieutenant said.
Walmart employees said Mr. Lane drove around the center’s parking lot four times around 3:30 p.m. local time, Lieutenant Borden said. He crashed into the building and started firing randomly into the distribution center and parking lot with a semiautomatic rifle, she said.
Minutes later, an officer arrived and exchanged gunfire with Mr. Lane. “I’m told it was quite a bit of gunfire,” she said. Another officer arrived shortly after, and Mr. Lane was shot at 3:48 p.m.
Deputies found a worker, Martin Haro-Lozano, badly wounded and took him in their own vehicle to a hospital, where he died, the authorities said. Six people were taken to hospitals with injuries ranging from minor to moderate.
Lieutenant Borden said officials had not yet identified a motive for the shooting. She said the Walmart shooting in Red Bluff, a rural area about 130 miles north of Sacramento, was not connected to one earlier in the day in Shingletown, Calif., in which three people were killed.
A Walmart employee, Franklin Lister, 51, said he and a group of his co-workers had just clocked into their afternoon shifts when an employee ran down the hall shouting: “Active gunfire! Active shooter!”
Mr. Lister said he had seen blood dripping from his colleague’s arm.
“That’s when I realized it wasn’t a drill,” he said.
Mr. Lister and his co-workers ran out the nearest fire exit.
As they were running, he said, they heard 50 to 60 gunshots — at which point they picked up their speed and helped one another over a barbed-wire fence.
When Mr. Lister looked back at the building, he said, he saw that a white vehicle had rammed into an entrance. The glass that had shattered from the crash caused his colleague’s arm to bleed, he said.
“To hear that much gunfire, it was frantic,” said Mr. Lister, who unloads deliveries that are then repackaged and shipped to Walmart stores. “People were running as fast as they could move.”
Another Walmart employee, Scott Thammakhanty, told The Record Searchlight, a newspaper in Redding, Calif., that he had heard gunshots and had seen people on the ground as he and other employees ran.
A number of employees barricaded themselves in the back of the distribution center, according to police radio transmissions at the time.
Scott Pope, a Walmart spokesman, said the company was deeply saddened by what happened.
“Our focus is on supporting our associates, as well as their families and co-workers in the facility,” he said. “This is an active police investigation, and we will continue to work with Tehama County Sheriff’s Office and assist in their investigation in any way possible.”
Two workers at a coffee dispenser warehouse in Springfield, Ill., were fatally shot on Friday after a co-worker opened fire, the authorities said. Another worker was critically wounded. The gunman fled and was found in his vehicle more than two hours later, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the authorities said.
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June 28, 2020 at 10:15PM
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2 Dead in Shooting at Walmart Distribution Center in California, Including Gunman - The New York Times
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