Walmart warehouse gunman was high on meth, carrying AK-47 during 2018 arrest, police say

The gunman killed in the Walmart distribution center shooting in Northern California on Saturday was high on methamphetamine when he was arrested in 2018 at a Henderson, Nevada airport with an AK-47 in his vehicle and a Glock 9 mm in his waistband, police said.

Louis Wesley Lane, 31, of Redding had a bench warrant out for his arrest stemming from the Nevada case when he rammed his SUV into the distribution center near Red Bluff on Saturday afternoon and began opening fire with a semi-automatic rifle he had with him, investigators say. He killed one person and wounded six others.

Lane had worked at the Walmart facility but he was fired last year after failing to show up for his shift, officials said.

A Henderson, Nevada police report shows Lane’s erratic behavior and tendency to carry weapons with him had been documented by officers two years earlier.

Employees at the Henderson Executive Airport called police on Dec. 8, 2018, after Lane came to rent a car. Employees told officers they grew alarmed because he had a firearm of the floorboard of the rental pickup he was returning and he’d been asking where “all the employees were,” Henderson police officer Alejandro Alcantara wrote in his report.

Officers arrived and found Lane in a white Ford F-150 parked in a dirt lot on the grounds. The first thing officers noticed was he appeared to have a tourniquet on his left arm.

“From where I was standing I noticed two rubber bands around Louis’s left arm which appeared to be a tourniquet,” Alcantara wrote in his report. “I also observed the skin around the rubber band appeared to be a darker color than the rest of the skin on his arm.”

The officers asked him to get out of the car and he told them he had a loaded 9 mm in his waistband and three magazines in his pocket. He had an unloaded AK-47 in the back of the truck. Inside the rifle’s case was an empty AK-47 banana magazine and a loaded AK-47 magazine. There were several boxes of ammunition for both weapons, Alcantara wrote.

He appeared itchy and fidgety like he was on methamphetamine, Alcantara wrote, and he claimed the truck he had just rented had broken down.

“He stated he was seeing some sights on his way to Texas from California,” he said. “Louis was asked why he was parked in the turn lane of Jet Stream Drive. Louis could not provide an answer. At one point Louis stated he was being chased by the employees of (the) car rental center in the airport. When I asked why the employees were chasing them especially if they just rented him the truck, and he responded he did not know.”

He later tested positive for meth, police said.

During their investigation, officers called Lane’s mother, who told them she had been unable to reach her son, but she had received a phone call from one of Lane’s friends who said he had been acting strangely and claiming people were chasing him and acting fearfully, Alcantara wrote.

Lane was arrested on a count of carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, a felony, and a misdemeanor count of possessing a firearm under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Court records show that as part of a plea deal, the felony was reduced to a misdemeanor and his 120-day jail sentence was suspended as long as he stayed out of trouble for six months. He also agreed to forfeit his guns.

Last year, a judge in Clark County, Nevada, issued a bench warrant for his arrest after Lane failed to appear for a status check required under the deal. By that point, Lane had apparently moved back to California.

Facebook posts about guns

Aside from traffic tickets, California’s criminal court records show Lane also had two misdemeanor battery charges in Shasta County — one in 2007 and one in 2015. Both were dismissed.

The 2015 case also included a temporary restraining order to stay away from a Redding movie theater, according to the Record Searchlight in Redding. A Shasta County court spokeswoman said the records in the case had been destroyed.

A Facebook page that appears to belong to Lane hasn’t had a public post since 2018. The page includes numerous photos of firearms he said he purchased, including handguns and assault rifles, including an AK-47.

Below a 2016 photo of a rifle and a shotgun at a public shooting area near Redding, a Facebook friend wrote, “Proof that anyone can own a gun.” Lane replied, “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Exactly what it says,” the friend says.

In November 2018, Lane shared a story about parents getting hospitalized for eating Halloween candy laced with meth.

It’s not clear where Lane acquired the gun used in Saturday’s shooting and whether it was illegal under California’s strict assault rifle regulations. Investigators have said he had ammunition magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds. So-called “high-capacity magazines” are illegal to buy in California.

Investigators believe the only fatal victim of the attack, Martin Haro-Lozano, 45, had tried to help the shooter, not knowing Lane was there to shoot up the warehouse, Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston told The Record Searchlight.

Saturday’s mass shooting was the second in three years inside the rural county of 65,000 people, sprawling orchards and cattle ranches two hours north of Sacramento.

In November 2017, a gunman drove through the rural community of Rancho Tehama, shooting indiscriminately. In the rampage, Kevin Janson Neal killed five people and wounded dozens of others, including several students at an elementary school before he shot himself in the head after a gunfight with deputies.

Despite a restraining order requiring him to surrender his weapons, Neal routinely frightened his neighbors in remote Rancho Tehama Reserve by firing guns in the air.

At least nine people brought Neal’s erratic behavior to the attention of the Sheriff’s Office with few tangible results, a 2019 Bee investigation found.

This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 12:00 PM.