WMT Walmart Inc

By Elizabeth Findell and Sarah Nassauer 

EL PASO, Texas -- Walmart process supervisor Gilbert Serna tossed and turned with anxiety for two nights before returning to the store where he has worked since 2002, and where he fled a mass shooter in August.

His brother, who has worked at the same store 16 years, encouraged him and said they would go together. When he walked in the door, the renovated store looked different, but Mr. Serna also felt his anxiety subsiding.

"I was happy to be back home," he said.

On Thursday, Walmart Inc. will reopen to the public the Texas Supercenter where a gunman killed 22 people on Aug. 3, allegedly targeting immigrants in this heavily Hispanic border city. But the emotional reopening of a mass murder site isn't welcome news to all the survivors and community members processing this summer's events.

The Walmart store, which sits about 2 miles north of the border, is among the nation's busiest, often packed with a mix of El Paso locals and Mexican citizens. It employs 375 people, the majority of whom are returning to work, said store manager Robert Evans.

Employees received three days of disaster pay and 14 days of extreme hardship pay after the shooting, said Delia Garcia, a spokeswoman for Walmart. They were then transferred to work in other El Paso-area Walmarts. Since mid-October, they have been back to work at the superstore, preparing for it to open.

Over the past three months, the store has been gutted, Mr. Evans said. It has new fixtures and polished concrete flooring instead of tile. Its pharmacy and vision center are among the first in the country to have a new format. It has new employee lounges and patios. The layout is different.

He hopes the store's newness will help a community move on from what happened there.

"With something as tragic as [the shooting], we want our associates and our customers to see something different and feel comfortable coming back to our store and getting on with our lives," said Mr. Evans, an El Paso native who has worked for Walmart 21 years and been manager of the supercenter for seven years.

Arnulfo Rascon, who was shot in the store, doesn't believe reopening the store will help him and other survivors to heal. Mr. Rascon, 56, a father of two and former factory sales manager, struggles to walk after knee surgeries and still gets emotional reliving Aug. 3. He sees Walmart in his nightmares, he said.

Mr. Rascon is among more than two dozen victims and family members of victims who sued Walmart in the wake of the shooting. The company responded with a cross-claim against the accused gunman, saying the loss of life was solely his fault.

"Walmart executives were not there when it happened -- it affected us physically, economically, mentally," Mr. Rascon said in Spanish. "It's very difficult that it's opening again."

Two Walmart employees were among the 25 injured survivors of the shooting, one who was shot in the hand and one who was shot in the buttocks, Mr. Evans said. He said one of them is back at work and the other plans to return.

The store will have a permanent "Grand Candela" memorial in its parking lot, a tower of 22 light-emitting beams. It is under construction.

The mass shooting in the Walmart store has put the country's largest retailer and private employer at the center of the debate around guns in the U.S. and rattled a region that prides itself on its mix of Mexican and American heritage.

In the wake of the shooting, Walmart has faced calls from antigun activists and some employees to end firearm sales in its stores and work to reduce gun violence. In September, Walmart said it would stop selling certain types of ammunition that could be used in handguns and semiautomatic rifles.

Chief Executive Doug McMillon said the company doesn't plan to discontinue all gun sales, citing its long history serving the hunting community.

Authorities have charged Patrick Crusius, 21, in August's El Paso killings. Law-enforcement officials said he traveled some 650 miles from his home in the suburbs of Dallas to El Paso to kill Mexicans. They said Mr. Crusius had published a racist posting on the Web forum 8chan that said Hispanic immigrants were replacing native-born white Americans and he hoped to kill as many as possible.

Mr. Crusius has pleaded not guilty. He doesn't yet have a trial scheduled.

Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 14, 2019 07:32 ET (12:32 GMT)

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