A man allegedly killed his co-worker he was obsessed with because she took long lunch breaks and would not pay attention to him.
Travis Lee Merrill, 51, is accused of shooting dead Tamhara Collazo at the Allegiance Trucking office building on Thursday morning.
Cops responded to a multiple calls of an ‘active shooter’ at the building on the 1800 block of Lakeway Drive in Denton County, Texas, and found Merrill standing ‘with his hands already raised in the air’, according to the Lewisville Police Department.
When asked he if he was the shooter, Merrill said, ‘Yes,’ and pointed to his guns, police said. He was arrested without incident.
Inside the business, Collazo was discovered under the desk in her cubicle with a gunshot wound in her chest, two on her arm and one on her leg.
She was rushed to Medical City Lewisville hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Merrill allegedly admitted to shooting Collazo, who noticed he was watching her for months and reported him to the company. Merrill said he was suspended and had to speak with a counselor before being allowed back, and that she started avoiding him.
‘He was obsessed with Collazo and began getting every increasingly angry by her taking what he considered to be unauthorized long breaks during work hours as well as not paying any attention to him,’ states a probable cause affidavit obtained by Law&Crime.
Merrill told law enforcement officials that she ‘had caused him pain, and he wanted her to feel pain, so he intentionally planned to shoot her at work with everyone there’.
He said he followed Collazo when she left for her lunch break to her car and ‘readied his guns’, then trailed her back to her cubicle where he ‘ambushed her’, according to the affidavit.
Merrill allegedly confessed to practicing shooting hand motions at home and bringing firearms to the office on two other instances, including the day before the shooting which ‘didn’t feel like the right time’.
He has been charged with one count of first-degree murder and is incarcerated at the Denton County Jail with his bond set at $10million.
Allegiance Trucking stated that other employees and Collazo’s family were ‘thankfully’ unharmed and that the office has been shuttered until further notice.
‘We ask for the community’s support as our company has unfortunately joined the growing national community of workplaces affected by gun violence,’ stated the company, according to KDFW.
Collazo was murdered two months after a bank employee at Wells Fargo’s corporate office in Tempe, Arizona, was found dead at her cubicle four days after she unexpectedly died.
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