MANCHESTER, Conn. – Having been accused of stealing, Omar Thornton sat calmly in a meeting with a union representative and his supervisors they showed him a video of him stealing beer from the distributor he worked for. Then he signed a letter of resignation, headed for the door when he just started firing. One survivor described the actions of Omar Thornton as “cold as ice.”
When the smoke cleared, Thornton had killed eight people and wounded two, the targets all appear to be executives and managers. According to CBS NEWS, Thornton used a handgun to shoot the two men who fired him. He then went to the warehouse. As employees were loading beer onto trucks Thornton allegedly ran along the loading platform selectively shooting — killing some and sparing others. Union and company officials said they would not have anticipated such violence from someone with no history of complaints or disciplinary problems. But authorities found two 9 mm handguns at the scene, and a shotgun in Thornton’s car.
Thornton’s family members said that Thornton, 34, finally cracked after suffering racial harassment in a company where he said he was singled out for being black in a predominantly white work force. “Everybody’s got a breaking point,” said Joanne Hannah, the mother of Thornton’s longtime girlfriend. After shooting his co-workers, Thornton hid as police moved in. He called his mother, who tried unsuccessfully to talk him out of killing himself, his uncle Will Holliday told reporters. –martin pratt