Girlfriend of Hartford Shooter Speaks Out

Girlfriend of Connecticut Gunman Who Killed 9: Racial Harassment 'Would Make Somebody Go Crazy'

By EMILY FRIEDMAN, LEE FERRAN and JASON STINE
Aug. 5, 2010



The girlfriend of the man who gunned down eight people before turning the gun on himself at a Connecticut beer distributorship Tuesday said she heard evidence of enough racial harassment the man had allegedly suffered at work to drive someone "crazy."

"He said every day when he'd come in, there'd be new stuff on the [bathroom] wall," Kristi Hannah told "Good Morning America."

"One was a hangman with a noose around his neck and underneath it said, 'Kill the n-word.'"

Hannah, who said she was gunman Omar Thornton's girlfriend for nine years, said he showed her cell phone pictures of the racial slurs written in the bathroom.

"I know what I seen on that wall and that picture and that would make somebody go crazy," she said. "If they keep doing it to somebody over and over and over and over and over. And I know that was happening to him because no one just wakes up one day and does that."

Company and union officials have said they were unaware of any harassment.

Hannah's comments came in stark contrast to those made on panicked 911 calls during the 45 minute rampage which were released Wednesday.

"Someone got shot, I got shot," Steven Hollander, the vice president of Hartford Distributors, told a 911 operator as he hid in his office. "We need the cops."

Hollander told the operator he knew the gunman.

"His name is Omar Thornton. He's a black guy, and get the cops here right away, I'm bleeding all over the place," Hollander said. "We need cops right away."

From: http://abcnews.go.com/US/connecticut-shooters-girlfriend-talks-alleged-racial-harassment/story?id=11330589