AP: Gunman's girlfriend heard manager say company was going to "get rid of this dumb n"

mike r

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Wed Aug-04-10 02:03 PM
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AP: Gunman's girlfriend heard manager say company was going to "get rid of this dumb n"

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jBNP73m9cp2g6qFtWxCbJH6IAD3gD9HCQP5O0

Police: Gunman at beer warehouse targeted managers
By STEPHEN SINGER and JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN (AP) � 33 minutes ago

MANCHESTER, Conn. � The warehouse driver who fatally shot eight co-workers at a beer distributorship before killing himself apparently targeted managers who had hired a private detective to tail him and forced him to resign because he stole beer from work, police said Wednesday... The first people shot were managers or executives involved in Thornton's firing... Thornton also passed by at least two people and did not shoot them, including one woman in a wheelchair.

Finally, Thornton called his mother to say goodbye, said his uncle. Thornton, who is black, had complained of racial harassment for months to family and friends. He indicated he did target people � but because they had harassed him. "I shot the racists that was bothering me," he told his mother... The company had hired a private investigator to follow Thornton outside of work after becoming suspicious that he was stealing alcohol. The amount of alcohol Thornton allegedly took wasn't clear.

Among the people shot were several in positions of responsibility at Hartford Distributors: Steve Hollander, 50, a member of the family that owns the company. Hollander was shot twice but survived. The dead also included Bryan Cirigliano, 51, president of Teamsters 1035, who had been Thornton's representative at the hearing.

Kristi Hannah, 26, Thornton's girlfriend of eight years, said he had told her months ago that he was racially harassed, and he showed her photos he took with his cell phone of a drawing on a bathroom wall of a stick figure with a noose around the neck and a racial slur and another with his name on it and that the writer hated black people. One day, she said, he called her from a bathroom stall, then held up his phone and she could hear a company official, apparently unaware Thornton was in a stall, tell someone else that the company was going to "get rid of this dumb n-----."...

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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/08/04/2010-08-04_kristi_hannah_girlfriend_of_omar_thornton_recalls_gunmans_goodbye_racism_concern.html?page=1

"A few weeks ago he told me that the company wanted to get rid of him," she said. "They were looking for a way to get him out of the company and paint him as a problem. That they were going to pin something on him and get him out of the company." Thornton, she said, the pushed to edge by the bigots jealous of his success who wanted to take him down a few pegs. She said she crafted a letter for him to the Budweiser company - a letter he signed - in which he detailed the racist abuse.

"He heard people say he got promoted because he was a n-----," she said. "That's when on the bathroom wall he saw a noose and the words "Kill all n-----s." The taunts escalated to on-the-job sabotage, she claimed. "Sometimes his coworkers would pack the trucks the wrong way just to give him extra work," she said. "He was one of only two black guys in the whole company and they were both treated as outcasts. As misfits."

Hannah said that Thornton's union rep - who she claims was a cousin of the company owner - didn't support him...