Hobby Lobby Employee Shoots and Kills Manager in Warehouse Leading to Manhunt

A Hobby Lobby distribution center manager in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on Wednesday was fatally shot by an employee, police said.

According to Sergeant Rob Robertson, public information officer for the Oklahoma City Police Department, officers received the initial call to the distribution center about 4:45 p.m. CST.

Upon arriving at the scene, officers said, they learned that an employee of the Hobby Lobby center had come in to speak with a manager. The meeting between the two resulted in an altercation, and the employee shot the manager at least one time, police said.

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Police later confirmed that the suspect was dead after rolling his car onto the highway and barricading himself inside the vehicle following a police chase. According to ABC News affiliate KOCO, he was traveling at 100 mph when he crashed.

According to the company’s website, the Hobby Lobby distribution center in Oklahoma City houses the warehousing, manufacturing, transportation and corporate departments. The warehouses span over 10 million square feet and process weekly orders for all 900 Hobby Lobby stores across the country.

According to a report from Kaylee Olivas, correspondent for KFOR who’s at the scene of the shooting, Hobby Lobby had not immediately alerted employees of the incident.

“A Hobby Lobby employee came up to us right before 7PM and had no idea what was going on,” Olivas wrote on Twitter. “She drove an hour to the distribution center to work her shift and found out what happened through us. She says Hobby Lobby hasn’t told them anything.”

Newsweek has reached out to Hobby Lobby for comment.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5,190 fatal workplace incidents occurred in 2021. Around 9 percent were the result of “intentional injury by another person.”

Zippia, an online recruitment service, also reported that around 2 million people are victims of workplace violence annually. Around 85 percent of the incidents are robberies, and in 2020, 392 employees died from violence while on the job.

In November 2022, six people were killed and several others injured after an overnight team lead for Walmart opened fire on employees in the store’s meeting room in Chesapeake, Virginia. The shooter, identified as Andre Bing, had worked at the company since 2010.

In January, farmworker Chunli Zhao was charged in the shootings at agricultural facilities in Half Moon Bay, California, that killed seven people.

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