Walmart workers charged with fatally crushing suspected shoplifter

Employees at Walmart have been charged for killing a man that was trying to steal a DVD. Photo / AP

It was the middle of the night on February 7, at a Florida Walmart Supercenter, when a man attempted to steal $380.74 worth of DVDs, police said.

Pushing a shopping cart stacked high with them, the man tried to leave the store, but when employees noticed - and then confronted him - the man ran, police said, tugging at his falling pants along the way.

At some point, the man fell, the initial police report says, and three Walmart employees detained him.

Twelve hours later, the man, identified by Lakeland police as Kenneth Wisham, was dead.

Reports from police at the time hinted at a medical mystery that had overtaken the 64-year-old, who stopped breathing while he was being detained. Wisham never regained consciousness, despite life-saving efforts at Walmart and the hospital, and was pronounced dead later that afternoon.

Two days later, the Polk County Medical Examiner's Office performed an autopsy.

The cause of death, officials determined, was mechanical asphyxia by restraint, meaning his airway was suppressed during a struggle.

Wisham also had 15 broken ribs.

Nearly seven months after Wisham died, Lakeland police issued arrest warrants for three people last week, all employees of Walmart. They face one charge each of manslaughter. The two men and one woman - Nathan Higgins, 35; Randall Tomko, 58; and Crucelis Nunez, 23 - were taken into custody on Friday.

A Walmart spokesman told the Lakeland Ledger that the company is conducting its own investigation, and the employment status of the three individuals involved is under review.

"Our hearts go out to everyone affected by these events," spokesman Charles Crowson told the Lakeland Ledger. "The status of the associates involved continues to be reviewed. We'll continue working with law enforcement officials, as we have from the beginning, while conducting our own review."

From left: Nathan Higgins, Crucelis Nunez, and Ruandall Tomko. Photo / Lakeland Police Department

Information in the employees' criminal arrest affidavits reveals details not initially released in early reports, including that witnesses saw one employee punch a man multiple times with a closed fist and with the help of the other two, forcibly pin him down on the ground.

At one point, Nunez said the man shouted, "I can't breathe!" before falling slack.

The pursuit started when Nunez, a customer service manager, heard the store's security alarm activate and saw another store employee confront the man, she told police. When he ran, she ran, too, chasing him through the parking lot and in the direction of a retention pond south of the store.

It appeared he was about to fall, Nunez told police, and when she "nudged" him he toppled. According to her arrest affidavit, Nunez told police she held the man down by placing pressure on his mid-back while Tomko placed pressure near his head and Higgins secured the man's feet.

The man yelled for the three to let him go, Nunez said, and then added that he couldn't breathe.

What was missing from Nunez's account, according to reports, was what witness Rebecca Baggett told police she saw happen that night: a woman jump on the back of a man, knock him to the ground, then punch him multiple times.

The man was holding his hands over his head, Baggett told police.

And that version differs from Tomko's retelling, who amended his story in the hours after the reported attempted theft during a police interview. Tomko, an asset protection officer, said he chased the man alongside his female colleague.

Tomko said Nunez caught up to the man first, according to the affidavit, and the man began to fight with her. At first, Tomko said he when he approached the two and identified himself as security, the man started "swinging at him."

"The defendant later changed his account of the incident and stated that when he approached Nunez and the victim, both of them were already on the ground," the affidavit said.

Fearing the man had a gun, Tomko told police he grabbed the man's arms to prevent him from reaching his pockets. They pinned him face down, Tomko said, and he lay atop the man at an angle for at least 10 minutes until Lakeland police arrived.

Witnesses and Tomko's colleagues told police he held the man's upper back and neck while the man was face down. Baggett, the witness, said she saw Tomko put a knee in the man's back.

The third Walmart employee charged with manslaughter, Nathan Higgins, was sitting in his truck in the store parking lot, taking a break from his graveyard shift as a support manager to eat his lunch and watch a video, when the reported attempted theft occurred. On his way back inside, Higgins ran into his assistant manager, who asked him to help his colleagues detain the man.

He grabbed the back of the man's ankles, Higgins told police, and pressed them toward the ground for about a minute before releasing when the man shouted for them to let go. The assistant manager, Erica Emerling, told police Higgins pushed the man's ankles toward his back at a bent angle.

By all accounts, Wisham struggled for several minutes, then stopped.

Higgins's bail was set far lower than Tomko's and Nunez's, reported the Lakeland Ledger, and his lawyer, James "Rusty" Franklin, said in an interview with the newspaper that his client played a minor role in the incident.

Higgins "was commanded by his supervisor to go intervene," Franklin told the newspaper. "All he did was grab the guy's ankles. It's a tragedy, no question about it."