2010 Hartford Distributors Mass Shooting
The Hartford Distributors shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on August 3, 2010, in Manchester, Connecticut. It is the deadliest workplace shooting in Connecticut history and the second-deadliest mass shooting in the state, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
The shooting occurred at a warehouse owned by Hartford Distributors in Manchester, CT. Hartford Distributors is a wholesale distributor of Budweiser beer products and wine.
Former employee Omar Sheriff Thornton shot and killed eight coworkers and wounded two others. Killed were Francis Fazio, Sr., 57; Douglas Scruton, 56; Edwin Kennison, 49; William Ackerman, 51; Bryan Cirigliano, 51; Craig Pepin, 60; Louis Felder, 50; Victor James, 61. Steven Hollander, 50 and Jerome Rosenstein, 77, were wounded.
Omar was born on April 25, 1976, and attended Manchester High School before graduating from East Hartford High School. He received a Nurse Aide Certificate from Connecticut Dept of Public Health, Phlebotomy Skills for Health care Personnel from Naugatuck Valley Community College, and owner of O & E Clothing. He also owned a small trucking company.
34-year-old Thornton was called into the warehouse on the day of the shooting for a disciplinary hearing; the shooting began after Omar Thornton was presented with a video evidence of the beer theft he had been accused of.
He was also reportedly implicated in the theft of empty beer kegs. We can report an exclusive on this old case as a result of some inside knowledge: he was terminated from a previous job over theft as well.
The editor of Crime Culture Media was an operations supervisor at a company where Thornton’s was hired on contract to deliver appliances. The contract was terminated as a result of Thornton’s thefts.
At Hartford Distributors, Thornton signed the resignation papers rather than be fired. As he was being escorted out of the building, he asked for a glass of water and went into the kitchen. There, police said, he had a lunchbox containing at two handguns. He took a Ruger SR9 semi-automatic pistol from his lunchbox and opened fire.
Jerry Rosenstein, 77 of West Hartford, went after Thornton in a golf cart, attempting to run him down. Rosenstein was shot several times in the process.
Initially listed in critical condition, he improved and was soon in fair condition at Hartford Hospital in the days following the shooting, according to a hospital spokesperson. He ultimately survived; his wife died earlier this year in February of 2024 (they were from Bloomfield).
Bryan Cirigliano, president of the local Teamsters union, ran toward Thornton in an attempt to stop the shooting, and was shot in the head, the Hartford Courant reported. Others warned coworkers to run, saving lives.
Victor James, 61, Craig Pepin, 60, and Francis Fazio, 57, saved lives when they warned other coworkers to flee. Thornton chased all three of them down and shot them dead.
Police arrived on the scene just three minutes after the first 911 call and aggressively entered the building seven minutes later, prompting Thornton to hide in a locked office.
As more police entered the building, Thornton called his mother and explained to her what he had done. He told her he planned on turning the gun on himself.
As police closed in, Thornton called 911, saying his motive for the massacre was racism he had experienced in the workplace. He told the 911 operator that he wished he had killed more people.
"This is Omar Thornton, the shooter over in Manchester," he says to the 911 operator.
He told the operator repeatedly that the motive behind the shooting is because of racial harassment.
"You probably want to know the reason for this. This place is a racist place, they treat me bad over here," he said.
Thornton told the 911 operator, "I'm not going to kill nobody else," adding, "I wish I could've got more of the people."
When the operator asked for his location within the building, Thornton responded, "I'm not going to tell you that. When they find me that's when everything will be over.
Thornton spotted the SWAT team closing and got off the phone, saying:
"Tell my people that I love them and I got to go now," Thornton said before hanging up.
After hanging up with emergency services, Thornton killed himself with a shot to the head. At the time Thornton started shooting, there were around 40 employees in the building.
Between 7:30 a.m. and 8:15 a.m., Thornton shot and killed eight people and injured two more. According to police, the shooting began at about 7 A.M., and Thornton was found fatally shot inside the building before 9 A.M.
Thornton grew up in East Hartford where he lived with with his mother on Silver Lane. His longtime girlfriend's mother, Joanne Hannah, of Enfield, said, "This guy was the most mellowest down to earth quietest person you would ever meet, we're shocked."
Thornton and Hannah’s daughter, Kristi, dated on and off for 8 years and had talked about getting married. Hannah’s son Ryan said, "We went to the beach a couple of times, I stayed over. He's bought dinner for us every time, pizza, grinders, and stuff. He was a great guy," said Ryan Conway.
Thornton had filed for bankruptcy in 2000, and had his commercial driver's license suspended in 2008 for three months. His Facebook page, now deleted, contained a link to Hoffman's Gun Center and Indoor Shooting Range on Berlin Turnpike in Newington.
Thornton’s girlfriend said the gunman had acted “strangely” the morning he said goodbye to her for the last time.
“He seemed like he was in daze,” Kristi Hannah said about the behavior of her boyfriend.
Thornton, 34, seemed like “he had a lot on his mind” the night before, Hannah told The New York Post. When Thornton and Hannah were in the kitchen, he looked like “he had things on his mind. He just kept acting really quiet, like he was mad about something.”
“I kept asking him what was wrong,” Hannah said. “And he wouldn’t tell me.”
He also acted “strangely” when he said goodbye on Tuesday, and went out of his way to be affectionate to her, Hannah said.
Thornton hugged her, kissed her, said, “I love you,” then he got into his car and told her for a second time, “I love you,” she said.
Hannah said she saw Thornton was smiling, and then she ran over to him and gave him one last kiss. She said that when she saw news of the bloodbath on TV, her “legs turned to Jell-O. And I just dropped to the floor.”
Soon afterward, Hannah said she saw detectives at a house across the street where the couple used to live. She texted him to ask if he knew what was going on, but Thornton never responded to her. He had already murdered eight of his co-workers and shot himself in the head.
"We knew had a pistol permit. He had pistols because he was taking my daughter to shoot at the range, for her own protection and this is what happened," Joanne Hannah said.
She added that Thornton had talked about a noose and racial slurs written on the wall of the warehouse bathroom, but union officials told the Associated Press there were no reports made about race related threats and that Thornton was asked to resign for stealing beer.
"Yeah, I think he just had his breaking point. He had enough of it," Hannah added.
"He said, 'I killed the five racists that was there bothering me,'" said Will Holliday, Thornton's uncle.
"He said, 'That's it. The cops are going to come in so I'm going to take care of it myself.'"
The suggestion that the mass shooting was motivated by a racist work environment angered surviving employees and people close to the victims who said that Thornton’s allegations of racism were false.
"Everybody just thinks this race card is such a wrong thing," said Michael Cirigliano, whose slain brother, Bryan, was Thornton's union representative at the disciplinary meeting.
Michael Cirigliano spent three decades working at the same warehouse until his retirement.
"It's never been separated white, black, Asian. It's never been like that," he said.
Anthony Napolitano, the son-in-law of victim Victor James, 60, of Windsor, said James treated everyone equally, regardless of race or religion. Truck driver David Zylberman, a 34-year employee of the company, said that the racism accusations "pissed me off because they were good people."
Thornton's ex-girlfriend, Jessica Anne Brocuglio, 30, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he had a history of racial problems with co-workers at other jobs and believed he was denied pay raises because of his race. She said he told her: "I'm sick of having to… get another job because they can't accept me."
At the company we both worked for, he accused us and the company we were contracted to deliver appliances for of racism as well, though not until after he was seen stealing old appliances that had been hauled away from customers homes.
The union's lawyer, Gregg Adler, said the claims of racial mistreatment can be difficult to disprove, but if they had been raised by any employee the union would have acted immediately.
"There's [no] connection between the violence and the accusations as far as we can tell," Adler said. "The only people who were targeted were the people who happened to be in his meeting. And then he went to the warehouse, he just killed people who happened to be near the door."
Hartford Distributors president Ross Hollander said there was no record to support the claims of racism but that the company would cooperate with any investigation.
Thornton's on again off again girlfriend of eight years, Kristi Hannah, claimed that he showed her cell phone photos of racist graffiti in the bathroom at the warehouse, and overheard managers using a racial epithet in reference to him.
Police said they recovered the phone and forensics experts would examine it; the police probe did not find proof of racism at Hartford Distributors, and other minority workers at Hartford Distributors interviewed by the police disagreed with Thornton's allegation that the company was "a racist place".
As a result of the police investigation into the shooting, Christy Quail and Sean Quail were arrested for receiving the property alleged to have been stolen by Thornton.
Sean Quail was arrested on August 17 in an incident where he sprayed bug-repellent at reporters covering the case. Quail was charged with three counts of first-degree reckless endangerment, three counts of third-degree assault, carrying a dangerous instrument, and breach of peace.
WTNH 8, an ABC affiliate serving the Hartford-New Haven area, secured footage of Thornton’s theft, as well as security footage from inside of Hartford Distributers showing Thornton on the day of the shooting.