Omar Thornton

Omar Sheriff Thornton (April 25th, 1976 - August 3rd, 2010) was an American mass shooter who committed the Hartford Distributors shooting on August 3rd, 2010 in Manchester, Connecticut. He killed eight people and injured two others before killing himself.

Before the Shooting
Omar Thornton was employed at the Hartford Distributors factory, a local beer distribution company; he claimed that he had been a victim of racial discrimination while working there, as most of his coworkers were Caucasian. This was his main motive for the shooting. However, despite these supposed circumstances, he never submitted a report to the management or any other authority.

Surveillance footage had captured him stealing beer once and was suspected of stealing empty beer kegs on another occasion.

The Shooting
On August 3rd, 2010, Thornton was called into the warehouse for the aforementioned infractions at about 7:00 AM, and was given the option to either get fired or resign. He chose the latter, signing the resignation papers. As he was being escorted off the premises, he pulled two Ruger SR9 semi-automatic pistols out of his lunchbox and opened fire, marking the beginning of the shooting. An amplitude of 911 calls were made by various employees during the shooting, some of them identifying the shooter as Omar Thornton. It took about three minutes for police to arrive at the scene after the first 911 call.

It didn't take long for SWAT members to close in on him, forcing him to hide in a locked office. While he was locked in there, he called his mother and explained what happened, as well as letting her know he had planned on committing suicide. After hanging up, he then called 911 and identified himself to the operator. He let the operator know that the reason he shot up the workplace was because it was a racist place, but didn't plan on killing anyone else. The operator asked him to surrender himself to the police, but he refused to do this. He also refused to give away his exact location, telling him they'd find him when "everything would be over." After hanging up, he then turned in the gun on himself, officially ending the shooting.