Walmart Shooter Was Iranian Immigrant

Walmart shooter Mohammad Moghaddam, 54, moved to Amarillo from Iran several years ago.

On Tuesday, Moghaddam took hostages and fired shots at an Amarillo, TX  Walmart  before he was killed by a SWAT Team, leaving employees and customers in a state of terror. No other injuries were reported.

Moghaddam, a Walmart employee, was reportedly upset because he wanted a better job. He entered the store with a gun, fired shots into the ceiling and took the store manager and another employee into an office where he held them hostage.

“As far as we know right now, it had something to do with a promotion and the possibility he might be passed over for a promotion,” Potter-Randall Special Crimes Unit Coordinator Lt. Erick Bohannon said during a news conference.

The Associated Press used its national platform to quickly clean up the narrative by dismissing the possibility of any problems relating to his Iranian roots:  

“Amarillo police say the armed man who took two people hostage inside a local Wal-Mart was a store employee who had a work-related dispute with the manager and that there was no reason to believe the incident had any ties to terrorism.”

A customer said employees were running down the aisles screaming.

“I was at the tire center checking out when some employees are running down the aisles screaming, ‘Active shooter! Active shooter! Code 4,’ whatever that means,” Darren Mooneyham, an eyewitness, told the Amarillo Globe-News. 

“They said for everybody to get out. They are running people down the main aisles. It was just mayhem, essentially.”

Reportedly, immigrant services in Amarillo refused to say if Moghaddam received help in relocating.

The question was probably asked after the Globe-News published a picture of  Moghaddam’s house. 

It’s highly unlikely that Moghaddam would be able afford a nice home while subsisting on a Walmart income. That’s especially true when most Walmart employees only receive part-time hours in addition to low pay.

Moghaddam  either had a Section 8 voucher or some other, significant source of income.HIs wife also worked at Walmart. People living on $10-$12-an-hour part-time jobs can barely afford a basic apartment, let alone a beautiful home in a middle class neighborhood.

Moghaddam didn’t need to be angry over a missed promotion. He should have felt fortunate because he probably had a lot more than many of his co-workers.

But it wasn’t enough. 

Moghaddam’s sense of entitlement and ‘eye-for-an-eye’ ideology was the root of the problem, whether anyone calls it terrorism, or not.