A dispute between four women, one of them a Walmart employee, escalated into gunfire on Friday inside a Walmart store in northeast Harris County. According to ABC13, the altercation moved indoors from the parking lot, with the employee, now identified as 22-year-old Breshaun Manuel, shooting one of the women after a physical confrontation escalated near the cash registers.
Major Al Blenman of the Harris County Sheriff's Office described the shooting as "an isolated incident," noting "the public was around, so it was a dangerous scene," in a statement obtained by Click2Houston. Video footage captured by a witness and shared online shows a different Walmart employee and security guards attempting to mediate the confrontation moments before shots rang out.
The injured woman was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, while Manuel was photographed being led away in handcuffs. Baffled by the sudden violence, customers were evacuated from the store, which remained closed for the remainder of the day as detectives and crime scene units conducted their investigation. One shopper expressed his dismay, "It happened so quick, I'm like, where did the gun even come from? How did you even come to work with a gun?," in a statement obtained by Click2Houston.
Authorities have charged Manuel with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Santino Degomez, a witness at the scene, recounted to ABC13 that employees described Manuel as a typically "shy worker," which made the incident all the more shocking: "From what everybody else is telling me, they're telling me that she was, like, a shy worker and that she never showed signs to be, like, that type of person so they found it strange for her to just, you know, pull out a gun and resolve it in that type of manner."
As for the shoppers caught in the chaos, ABC13 interviewed one who was merely trying to buy Pokemon cards and Doritos when he witnessed the chaotic scene outside, lamenting the interruption of a routine shopping trip due to the unexpected violence. Meanwhile, the local community grapples with the reality that what started as an "ongoing dispute" escalated to gunfire in a public space they frequent – unsettling evidence that concerns over security cannot be taken lightly, as per Click2Houston.
