The suspect of the Walmart shooting in Chesapeake, Virginia, who opened fire in the store leaving six co-workers dead, displayed paranoid behaviour about the government watching him, a co-worker said.
Andre Bing, 31, the overnight team lead, allegedly opened fire on his colleagues inside a break room before turning the gun on himself. The incident unfolded just after 10pm on Tuesday at the superstore on Sam’s Circle.
Shaundrayia Reese, 27, a longtime colleague of Bing who worked with him from 2015 to 2018, said he used to keep his phone camera taped and “didn’t do social media”.
She recalled that once she was filming a video of her co-workers and Bing “kind of jumped out of the way” to avoid being on camera.
“He was always saying the government was watching him. He didn’t like social media and he kept black tape on his phone camera. Everyone always thought something was wrong with him,” she said.
“He didn’t like to be recorded. He was always scared that the government was listening.”
Meanwhile, a chilling “manifesto” has been found on the cellphone of Bing, in which he allegedly laid out his motive for the mass shooting.
A law enforcement source told 10 On Your Side that, in the document, Bing described being “upset” about a recent change in employment status and complained that he was being “harassed” by fellow employees.
His other colleagues have said he had a lot of “issues” with other staff members and had displayed threatening behaviour in the run-up to the shooting.
Joshua Johnson, a former Walmart employee who worked as a maintenance worker at the store until 2019, said Bing had given a harrowing warning about what he could do if he ever lost his job.
“He said if he ever got fired from his job he would retaliate and people would remember who he was,” Mr Johnson told CNN.