Milwaukee brewery employee barely missed Molson Coors shooter who killed 5
MILWAUKEE -- A worker at the Molson Coors complex said he was there at the site during Wednesday's deadly shooting, but one decision kept him safe.
What was a normal Wednesday turned terrifying for Molson Coors workers like Byron Johnson.
He was walking back from lunch at about 1:45 p.m. and said any other day he would have walked right through the gunman's path.
"I made a split decision at that moment to say, 'Well, I needed some new work gloves,' so I walked to the building over across the courtyard," Johnson recalled.
Johnson works on the fifth floor of building 4 and goes through utilities on the first floor to get there, he told WISN.
That's exactly where the gunman, Anthony Ferrill, shot and killed five men.
Johnson had just arrived in the break room when he heard the news.
"A second shift employee comes in and is like, 'did you see what happened downstairs.' I'm like, 'no what happened,'" Johnson said. "I just came up. I didn't see anything. He says, 'there's a guy who has an open wound and he's bleeding out on the floor.'"
He said two other coworkers ran in after that repeating the same thing.
"Seems about five to 10 minutes after that we get plant-wide text on phones saying there's an active shooter. Lock yourselves in somewhere," he said.
They locked themselves in a secure room until police arrived and eventually led them outside.
"And that's where we see two bodies or two individuals on the ground," Johnson said.
Johnson credits that last-minute decision for saving his life.
"The fact that I needed new work gloves and I decided to grab those work gloves before I went back to doing the next part of the project. I felt like that was the best time to go because it might have gotten busy later," he explained.
Johnson has worked at Molson Coors for about a year. He said he loves his job and has never experienced any issues with coworkers before.
