U.S.|2 Dead in Shooting at Walmart Distribution Center in California, Official Says
An employee at the center in Red Bluff, Calif., said he had heard 50 to 60 shots as he and other employees fled the building.
A shooting on Saturday at a Walmart distribution center in Red Bluff, Calif., left two people dead, a hospital official said.
Four other people were in fair condition, according to the official, Allison Hendrickson, a spokeswoman for St. Elizabeth Community Hospital in Red Bluff. She did not provide further details.
A Walmart employee, Franklin Lister, 51, said he had just clocked into his afternoon shift when an employee ran down the hallway 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. Red Bluff is about 130 miles north of Sacramento.
Mr. Lister and his team 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 each other over a barbed-wire fence.
When Mr. Lister looked back at the building, he saw that a white vehicle had rammed into an entrance, he said. 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.”
Emergency dispatchers told The Record Searchlight, a newspaper in Redding, Calif., that officials shot the gunman in the chest around 3:45 p.m. local time, about 15 minutes after the shooting began.
A Walmart employee, Scott Thammakhanty, told The Record Searchlight that he had heard gunshots and had seen people on the ground as he and other employees ran.
The Tehama County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lacie Miller, the 37-year-old assistant manager of a nearby convenience store, said employees who had gathered outside of the building said that the vehicle crash had caused a fire at the distribution center.
