‘I really wish she would have just left’: Employees of Colorado Springs business witness shooting that left one injured

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – A shooting in the parking lot of a Colorado Springs business left a woman seriously injured Friday morning.

It happened outside the Ranch Foods Direct, near the intersection of Fillmore and Hancock. The employees of that business spoke to 11 News about what they saw, recalling what led up to the shooting.

Brittany Mott said she was working at the time. She said around 7 a.m., an hour before the business opened, a woman was sitting on the sidewalk directly in front of the doors.

That’s when Mott said her manager asked the woman to leave, telling her she couldn’t be in front of the business.

“I really wish she would have just left because it wouldn’t have ever happened,” Mott said.

As she and her fellow employees continued to work, Mott said they noticed someone in a white truck pull up, causing a commotion with the woman from earlier.

“About an hour passed or so,” Mott said, “we were working and stocking and then all of the sudden, the customer came in and said someone was shot in the parking lot.”

Mott said they didn’t hear the gunshots while they were working inside; but, she looked out the glass door that faced the parking lot and said she saw the woman lying on the ground an bleeding.

Other employees told 11 News the suspect even tried to get into the business through the back door, with one of the employees having to close and hold the door so they couldn’t get inside. That suspect then fled the scene, according to the employees.

Mott said she and her manager went outside to try to help the woman.

“She was bleeding, like, a lot, so of course we believed the customer who said she was shot,” Mott said.

Police and EMTs arrived around 8:30 a.m. and took the woman to the hospital, where police said she was suffering serious, but non-life-threatening injuries. The suspect, at time of writing, is still on the run.

Police said they believe the shooting was an isolated incident. Mott speculated that the woman and the suspect might have known each other.

“The way that it happened was she didn’t provoke anything, from what we saw,” she said, “so, whatever happened had to have been prior altercation.”

Mott said she was worried it was a random attack. She said the whole situation made her feel uneasy.

“I live across the street, so it’s like… you know, we don’t want to say that it’s bad, but the world’s getting crazy because nothing happened for that to happen. It just happened,” Mott said.

Mott and her manager and fellow employees said they were waiting for updates on the woman. As one manager spoke to 11 News, she was bringing a shopping cart filled with what she thought might be the woman’s belongings inside for safekeeping. She said she wants to be able to return them to her once she recovers.

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