From the store manager who ran back inside when he heard gunshots to employees who helped dozens of shoppers escape through a back door, workers at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart, responded bravely to a shooting rampage that left 22 people dead, the company’s CEO said.
“I’ve met heroes,” Doug McMillon wrote in an open letter on the networking site LinkedIn, describing a visit to the site where he heard “story after story of courageous workers putting others ahead of themselves.”
The heroism, however, is coupled with growing concern from workers at the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer’s 4,700-plus U.S. stores, who want reassurance that their employer is doing everything it can to keep them safe as the FBI warns of possible copycat attacks. Employees from some locations told the Washington Examiner that they have asked about posting armed guards at entrances or wearing bulletproof vests to work.
The El Paso shooting was the deadliest in the history of the retailer, which employs 1.5 million people in the U.S., and came days after a disgruntled Walmart employee in Mississippi was arrested in the shooting deaths of two other associates.
Company spokesman Randy Hargrove said Walmart has made no policy changes so far and that its focus has been on El Paso workers and associates, a point McMillon reiterated in his open letter.
“We are a learning organization, and, as you can imagine, we will work to understand the many important issues” raised by the shootings, the CEO added. “We will be thoughtful and deliberate in our responses.”
To ensure its workforce is prepared for a firearm attack, Walmart already requires computer-based training once a quarter and employs specialists tasked with providing security in the stores. Many workers say that isn’t sufficient, leaving workers unsure about the best way to respond to a shooting, and one said it’s unclear who handles security management and how suspicious behavior should be reported.
The company did tighten its policies on firearm and ammunition sales by raising the minimum purchasing age to 21 after a gunman killed 17 people at a high school in south Florida last year. Walmart doesn’t sell handguns and stopped selling assault-style rifles in 2015.
