Confusion reigns in random attack
Marlena Fobb was slipping her credit card into the card reader, paying for contacts at the bustling Walmart. Fred Maldonado clocked in for his Wednesday night shift at 6 p. m. and was heading to the produce stock room to get bananas. Maurice Sartor was walking out with a sleeping bag, glad to have something warm to sleep in that night.
Then a “pop.” Customers around the store were confused. Was that a toy gun? Fireworks? Did a pallet just drop? But then another “pop” rang out. Gunshots.
Inside the Thornton Walmart at 9901 Grant St., people flooded toward exits in confusion, dropped to the floor for safety and bunkered in store offices as a gunman, who police believe is 47year- old Scott Ostrem, nonchalantly walked into the store at 6: 10 p. m., shooting at random.
Pamela Marques, 52; Carlos Moreno, 66; and Victor Vasquez, 26; were killed. Thornton police arrested Ostrem on Thursday morning. He is being held on suspicion of murder at the Adams County Jail and will appear in court at 11 a. m. Friday.
“This guy was an evil man,” said Fobb, her voice trembling. “I hope justice is served, because we’re just innocent people trying to shop. That’s just what we were trying to do. Shop and get home to our families.”
Darlene Jackson, who had been in the toy section, said people didn’t know which way to go — right, left, straight, back? Others were dropping down. Then she heard screams.
“It was the most god- awful sound,” she said. “It was a horrifying scream that I played over and over in my head.”
Hearing the shots, Jason Fobb grabbed his wife, and they threw themselves onto the ground. The couple crawled to the nearest door — an office in the eye center. Marlena Fobb pulled a worker by the jacket, dragging her with them. A family with two
toddlers sawthem and hurried into the office, too.
The Fobbs and the five others locked the office. The toddler’s father and aWalmart employee used their bodies to push against the door in case the gunman tried to force his way in, Marlena Fobb said.
The Fobbs had stopped by theWalmart afterwork, hoping to buy a vacuum before picking up their kids from the house of Jason Fobb’s mother. Instead, Marlena Fobb was on the phone with 911, talking over crying toddlers who were ignoring the group’s efforts to quiet them so the gunman wouldn’t hear.
“I told the lady across from me, ‘ Do you believe in God?’ ” Marlena Fobb said. “She said we have to start praying because this guy could be coming in any minute.”
The couple described nonstop shooting with only a small break. Jason Fobb said he peeked through a window and saw the gunmanwalking casually past the eye section. Fobb said he was worried he would come to the office.
“I heard more gunshots. That’s when I grabbedmywife and held her,” Jason Fobb said, recalling saying: “This is it. This is it.”
Fred Maldonado was still grabbing bananas, which he had planned to stack on a display in the middle of an aisle near the store’s front entrance, when the gunshots went off.
“I said, ‘ It’s time to get the hell out of here,’ ” he recalled.
Maldonado fled out an emergency exit in the stock room with a woman who worked in the pastry and bakery department.
As this was happening, Maurice Sartor was running out the doors, yelling at people to turn around, get in their cars and leave. He came across kids without parents. Standing between them and the store, he began asking drivers to ferry them away.
Kevin Blanco was in the ammunition section when he heard the first shot, not positive of what the sound was. But when the shooting continued, his military background kicked in. He said he noticedwhat sounded like a small- caliber, close- range revolver. His first instinct was to run to the front, where the gunman was.
But he didn’t have his gun. He considered breaking the glass to grab one in the aisle until he thought of his wife and kids. Then he decided to run to the back with the rest of the crowd.
“If I would have had my pistol on me, it would have been different,” he said.
A few of the shoppers at the time did draw their weapons, but police said that “absolutely” slowed the investigation as law enforcement tried to determine who, and how many, suspects were involved. They have not said whether other shoppers fired their weapons or whether the gunman was aware of their presence.
Blanco ran into the parking lot and got in his car, calling his wife. Instead of leaving, he stayed there. The parking lotwas in a state of panic as people tried to flee in their cars, he said.
Police questioned Sartor, he said, and then they took him to a hospital for a checkup after he said he suffered PTSD and anxiety.
Sartor, who is homeless, returned Thursday morning with a sheet wrapped around him, hoping to get his sleeping bag. But no one was allowed inside the store.
By the afternoon, though, Walmart began letting shoppers come in to grab their belongings and merchandise.
The Fobbs and five others were still locked in the office when police arrived. Jason Fobb had his ear to the wall, listening for noise when he heard the police walkie- talkies. He cracked open the door and waved his hand to signify that they were there. Police directed the seven of them to quickly run out and not look back. But they did glance back, seeing a man dead at the cash register with a full basket.
“Hewas ready to leave. Hewas standing right next to the basket,” Marlena Fobb said. “Ifwewere still in that line, wewould be the ones who would have been shot.”
The couple ran into the parking lot, where they saw people standing, recording things on their phones as more police and ambulances arrived. It upset them. Those people should be in their cars, looking for the shooter, Jason Fobb said. But for Marlena Fobb, the sole goal was to get to their kids.
When they got to the house of Jason Fobb’s mother, Marlena Fobb said she grabbed the kids, who are 9 and 13 years old.
“We sat on the couch and held each other and watched the news,” she said. “Watched everything that was going on and just cried.”