CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — A year ago, a shooter opened fire in a Chesapeake Walmart on Sam’s Circle.
That moment changed so many people’s lives.
Lorenzo Gamble was working his normal shift as a custodian that night. His cousin, Emma Brown, said he just finished making Thanksgiving banana pudding and headed to work.
“He was rushing to go to work and it was still on the counter,” she said.
Not too long after, she got a horrifying call.
“Lorenzo was shot at Walmart at work,” Brown said. “I jumped up and was in a panic,” Brown said.
While she tried to collect her thoughts, she said she got another more cheerful call.
“He is OK. Chesapeake General says he was released,” Brown said. “We had hope because they said he was discharged.”
It wasn’t until her family got to the reunification center that they learned he wasn’t coming home.
“It’s hard because anyone that knows him, he was the nicest person,” Brown said. “He was the sweetest guy. That’s why it’s so hard he was chosen. He never bothered anyone.”
A year later, Brown is bitter.
“Angry, just so angry at him [the shooter] and at Walmart,” she said.
She is frustrated by the fact that it could have been prevented.
“They were warned,” Brown said. “There were other employees under him that told the general manager, the store manager. They knew. They knew this man was on edge. If he got demoted, something was going to happen and he held true to his word.”
Brown said not two days before the incident happened, the shooter fired Gamble.
“HR didn’t find anything wrong in what he did or any reason he would have been terminated,” she said. “He called HR and corporate and got reinstated. Two days later, it happened.”
She even said employees just practiced the active shooter procedures.
“He picked the timing just right,” Brown said.
Brown said she’s learned Gamble was one of the targets.
“He was already down on the ground,” she said. “He came back and shot him again. … That was one of his targets. … That’s what makes it even a little more harder. It’s not easy to process it.”
The questions of why still linger in her head, which she said will never go away.
“They say all things happen for a reason,” Brown said. “I am at the point where I don’t understand how it got this far and led to this. I would never ever think my family would be a part of anything like that at all.”
She said her family continues to keep his memory alive.
“All the younger ones and I are going to get a tattoo. We had a birthday party for him… the things we were doing with him continue doing them,” Brown said.