Connecticut Gunman: 'I Wish I Could Have Killed More People'

Aug. 5, 2010 — -- After hunting down and killing coworkers that he thought were racist, the gunman at the Connecticut beer distributorship called 911 and calmly explained that he was done shooting but wished he had murdered more.

"You probably want to know the reason for this," Omar Thornton said in a relaxed tone."This place is a racist place. They treat me bad over here and all the other black employees bad over here too."

"So I took it into my own hands and handled the problem," he said. "I wish I could've got more of the people."

"I'm not going to kill nobody else though," said Thornton. "I'm calmed down."

Thornton refused to tell the operator where in the building he was located, "These cops are going to kill me," he said.

"When they find me that's when everything's going to be over," said Thornton.

Before abruptly ending the four minute call, Thornton told the operator that he was the only black driver at the company and claimed that he had been treated badly since he was hired. Thornton also admitted to the operator that he was armed but that he only had one gun left because he left the second in the warehouse.

A recording of Thornton's 911 call was made just hours after the CEO of Hartford Distributors today dismissed claims that racial harassment at the company drove Thornton to brutally gun down eight of his co-workers at the company's Connecticut warehouse Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters at an afternoon news conference, CEO Ross Hollander read prepared remarks about each of the victims, recalling his memories of their character. Hollander said that Thornton, who killed himself, had been "embraced" at the company until a company investigation revealed that he had been stealing and reselling beer.

"As for the claims that Omar's actions were the result of racial insensitivity, I can state to you unequivocally that no claim has ever been brought to the attention of our company," Hollander said, adding that no complaint had ever been filed with neither the company nor the government.

Hollander called the shooting an "inexplicable act," and spokesman James Battaglio noted that of 69 dockworkers at the warehouse, four were African Americans, nine Hispanic and one Asian.

Earlier today on "Good Morning America," Thornton's girlfriend described a far different workplace, saying 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 said. "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."