Manager recounts Macomb store hostage situation

Jeff Nimrick, manager of the Macomb Farm King, was in his office at about 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, shortly before Jonathan L. Labbe walked in with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

Labbe, 19, of Tennessee, Ill., wanted ammunition.

"What?" asked Farm King employee Jon Robinson.

"I want you to unlock all of the ammunition cases," said Labbe as he put the barrel of the unloaded AR-15 to Robinson's chest.

As Robinson turned around after unlocking the ammunition cases, Labbe jumped over the counter and grabbed a box of bullets.

Robinson called Nimrick.

"I've got a gentleman here with a gun," a terrified Robinson told Nimrick on the phone.

"I said, 'What?' and he says, 'he's got a loaded gun,' and I took off running," Nimrick said.

Labbe's actions set off what would be an hours-long standoff with police that ended with Labbe dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Authorities have not said when Labbe actually died. He was pronounced dead about 6:50 p.m., shortly after police entered the building.

Nimrick, who was interviewed Friday, said he ran past the service desk and cash registers in the front of the store. He ran to the center toward sporting goods, where he found Robinson in the aisle.

He yelled to Robinson to get out and yelled the same to customers who started to walk in the front door.

"They were coming in and I yelled at them to get out and ran back to sporting goods," Nimrick said.

Wanting to check where Labbe was, he peered around some fake trees in the sporting goods section used to display deer stands. He saw Labbe standing behind the counter ripping open a box of ammunition.

He ran back to the front of the store, where he found customers waiting in line.

"Get out of the store, get out of the store," he yelled.

More people were in the east end of the store. Nimrick directed them out to the east lot.

Through the ladies clothing section he went, not knowing if Labbe was on the move. When Nimrick got back to sporting goods,he said, Labbe loaded the magazine, inserted it in the gun and looked up as he walked around the gun counter.

"You don't want to be a part of this," he told Nimrick, who then ran back to the service desk in the front of the store.

Standing near the service desk, Nimrick watched as Labbe headed toward the front of the store.

"It wasn't an angry look, but just a determined look. It was the scariest sight I had ever seen," said Nimirck.

An emergency exit alarm sounded after Nimrick yelled at people to get out of the store. Four seconds later, the shooting began.

"Oh my God, he's shooting now," said Nimrick to a 911 telecommunicator. "He's shooting, hurry."

Authorities say 23 shots were fired, but for Nimrick it seemed like a lot more.

"It was right in a row, like an automatic," said Nimrick. "I don't know a whole lot about guns, but it wasn't a wait to reload; it was continuous."

Initially, he thought Labbe was searching for and shooting people in the store.

Throughout the shooting, Nimrick stayed on the phone, keeping police informed.

"Oh God, I hear another shot," Nimrick said, thinking Labbe was going around the store shooting. But two minutes after the shooting began, the last shot was fired.

Nimrick, still unsure of Labbe's whereabouts, managed to head toward an emergency exit, past the layaway area after letting police and the officers outside know.

"I thought he was still alive," said Nimrick. "I didn't think he was going to shoot himself."

Locked between two sets of doors near an emergency exit on the southwest side of the building with fellow employee Alice Comstock, Nimrick waited for the go-ahead to leave.

Finally they were cleared to leave and were told to run west.

As of Friday, the store had reopened, and aside from some damage and police tape in the lobby, things were back to normal.

"This is a just one in a trillion accident. He didn't, now that I know the whole story of what happened, I don't think he ever intended on hurting anyone but himself," said Nimrick."You can tell the shots that he fired were high in the walls and in the ceiling, so he never pointed that gun or tried to shoot anybody," Nimrick said.

McDonough County Voice