A woman who survived the shooting that killed six employees at a Walmart store in Chesapeake, Va., last week sued the retailer, saying she warned it months ago of “bullying, threatening and harassing” behavior by the person identified as the gunman. Donya Prioleau, an employee in the Chesapeake Walmart, said in her lawsuit filed on Tuesday that she had lodged a formal complaint against the man, who was a supervisor in the store, after he repeatedly made bizarre and inappropriate comments to her, the New York Times reports. Prioleau’s mother visited the store in September to warn managers about the employee’s behavior because she was “very concerned for her daughter’s safety,” according to the lawsuit. She was told that nothing could be done because he was “liked by management,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said Prioleau witnessed the killing of her colleagues and was injured trying to escape. The suit accuses Walmart of negligent “hiring and retention” practices because of its employee’s “known propensities for violence” and “strange behavior” before the shooting. Prioleau is seeking $50 million in compensatory damages. The police said gunman Andre Bing, 31, had left a “death note” on his phone in which he said employees at the store had mocked him and compared him to a serial killer. They said he noted co-workers he planned to target and others he planned to spare. Police said he used a newly acquired 9-millimeter handgun to shoot his colleagues in the store’s break room, then killed himself. The lawsuit stated that Mr. Bing had made troubling statements, including asking colleagues repeatedly whether they had received active-shooter training. When they told him that they had, he “just smiled and walked away without saying anything,” the lawsuit said. Walmart allegedly had demoted Bing for “improper and disturbing interactions with others,” but then reinstated him as a “team leader.” At the time of the shooting, he was supervising a group of employees who stocked shelves overnight.