DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. (WSVN) — Bad blood over an employee-of-the-month award at a South Florida Walmart store led to gunfire and criminal charges.
“If he wanted to get recognition, this is the wrong way to get recognized,” Broward Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Keyla Concepcion said.
Thirty-two-year-old Willie Mitchell was charged with discharging a firearm from a vehicle and criminal mischief.
According to a Broward Sheriff’s Office arrest report, November’s employee of the month at a Deerfield Beach Walmart store on South Military Trail had her car shot up by Mitchell, who was angry after she won the award. “Evidently, it seems like he thinks he should’ve been employee of the month instead,” Concepcion said.
The co-worker was not in her vehicle at the time, but investigators said after the award was announced Nov. 30, Mitchell started arguing with the victim.
According to the arrest affidavit, “The victim informed her supervisor she felt threatened by the defendant. The supervisor then spoke with the defendant, after which the defendant told the victim, ‘I’ll show you.'”
BSO said surveillance video from a Walmart parking lot showed Mitchell parking next to the victim’s vehicle, earlier in December. “Two o’clock in the morning, she goes outside to take her lunch break, and that’s when she realized that there was a bullet through her passenger side, rear door window,” Concepcion said.
The video showed no other vehicles pulled up to the victims, and according to a witness, Mitchell asked him in the parking lot if the victim was still at work.
A few minutes later, investigators said Mitchell rolled down a back window, fired a shot into his co-worker’s car then drove off.
Despite the shot, a window was not shattered, and the victim has since had the damage fixed.
The employee-of-the-month award does not offer more than recognition for the employee. “It doesn’t seem to be that there’s anything that they [Walmart] award the employee of the month other than the recognition with the peers and the public,” Concepcion said. “Evidently, now he’s getting the wrong type of recognition for his actions.”
Mitchell has since bonded out of jail and has been fired.