Connecticut mass murderer Omar Thornton paused after gunning down eight people to make an extraordinary 911 call – saying he wished he had killed more.
In remarkably calm tones, just before committing suicide, Thornton explained he shed so much blood because “this is a racist place.”
“You probably want to know the reason why I shot this place up,” Thornton said.
“They treat me bad over here, and they treat all the other black employees bad over here too. So I just took it into my own hands and I handled the problem,” he said.
“I wish I coulda got more of the people.”
His girlfriend, Kristi Hannah, who said he often complained of being called a “n—–” and seeing racist scrawls on the bathroom walls directed at him, said the 911 call confirmed what she suspected about his motive.
“There is only so much one man could take,” she said.
“They pushed and they pushed and they pushed and he finally just snapped. That’s what you hear in his 911 call. He couldn’t take it anymore
With local 911 lines overwhelmed, State Police Trooper William Taylor fielded the four-minute call Thornton made from a warehouse that was littered with eight corpses, two bleeding men and dozens of cowering co-workers.
The killer sounded composed and matter-of-fact, yet Taylor, perhaps at something of a loss, kept telling him to relax.
“You don’t need to calm me down, I’m already calmed down,” Thornton replied. “I’m not gonna kill nobody else. I just want to tell my story so that you can play it back.
“You’re gonna play something on the news. You know I’m gonna be popular.”
The trooper tried several times to get Thornton to say where in the building he was.
“I’m not gonna tell you that. Where they find me, that’s when everything will be over,” Thornton said.
“You’re gonna make the troopers and the people come in and catch you? You’re not gonna surrender yourself?” Taylor asked, cajoling the killer.
Then Thornton, who had just shot 10 men, most of them in the head, actually seemed to get playful.
“Well, I guess, uh, I guess, maybe I will surrender,” he said.
Then, as if to make clear he was kidding, he added, “Nah. They’ll come and get me.”
There was a little more conversation before Thornton cut it short.
“I have to take care of business,” he said. “Tell my people that I love them, and I gotta go now.”
There was a noise on the phone, and he was gone.
Police said they later found his body with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Thornton also placed a 10-minute call to his mother. It was not clear if that was before or after his chat with 911
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