This one hits very close to home for me. For about a year, my family and I lived in a hotel very close to that Walmart, which is across the street from a Golden Corral. We used to go in there all the time. We’ve gone in there fairly recently, probably. It’s not all that far from Suffolk; it’s just on the opposite side of the river.
Police are saying the shooter was a manager.
As do survivors.
Apparently this guy had issues.
It’s not a joke when I say that maybe the stress of the upcoming black Friday pushed him over the edge.
About a week ago, at a different Walmart, the one nearest us, a manager was having a meeting with several of her employees in, of all places, the cart return in the interior vestibule. There must have been 10 or 15 employees there, and easily 100 customers witnessed this meeting in passing.
Anyway, this was a come-to-Jesus meeting. Apparently some employees had been spending their shifts just sitting in their cars instead of working, and the manager said, “If I catch you doing that, I’ll get ya.”
I wonder how many employees involved in that meeting are now looking at her askance after a manager shot and killed six people at a store less than an hour away.
This could have been much worse.
Dunno if people will run into a paywall there; I didn’t.
If this is true, and I think it probably is, I wonder if he has any kind of paper trail of complaints that will bite Walmart in the ass. Keeping a manager for 12 years when he has anger problem complaints is certainly going to up Walmart’s responsibility here. I know they were going to be sued anyway, but this would certainly add a couple of numbers to the judgement for the families.
I live in Charlottesville, which endured a mass shooting just a week or so before this one. So when this story hit the wires, I briefly misread “Chesapeake” as “Charlottesville” and wondered what in the name of God was going on around here. Then I read it correctly and was quite relieved that this charming little college town hadn’t suddenly turned into the O.K. Corral.
Walmart being sued for keeping the nutcase.