Texas Man Killed Woman At Work After Becoming 'Obsessed' That She Took 'Long Breaks': Police

[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]

A Texas man is facing a murder charge after he allegedly shot and killed a co-worker at her desk last week… over the length of her work breaks?! WTF??

According to cops in the city of Lewisville, last Thursday 51-year-old Travis Lee Merrill (pictured above in his mugshot) walked up to a co-worker’s desk in the office of Allegiance Trucks and fired five shots at her. The co-worker, who was later identified as Tamhara Collazo, was severely wounded. She was rushed to the hospital, but she succumbed to her injuries and was pronounced dead there by doctors.

Per KDFW, Merrill was very quickly arrested on scene. As fate would have it, the Allegiance Trucks office shares a parking lot with the temporary headquarters of the Lewisville Police Department. So, officers responded immediately. But sadly, it wasn’t fast enough to prevent the tragedy — or save Collazo’s life.

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According to an arrest report seen by KXAS and others, Merrill had allegedly become “obsessed” with Collazo. Specifically, he was greatly concerned over the amount of “long breaks” she took while at work. The report stated:

“[Merrill] was obsessed with Collazo and began getting ever increasingly angry by her taking what he considered to be unauthorized long breaks during work hours, as well as not paying any attention to him.”

“What he considered to be unauthorized.” It sounds like it was never any of his business!

That scrutiny had been going on for several months. Finally, Collazo reported Merrill to the company’s Human Resources department. In turn, they suspended him from work. They reportedly punished him for the so-termed obsession and told him to stop watching her work breaks. We mean, fair, right? Before returning to work, Merrill also had to speak with a professional counselor over the phone prior to being cleared. Yeah, that didn’t work.

Unfortunately, according to WFAA News, his behaviors only worsened upon return. When cops questioned Merrill after the shooting, he acknowledged that his co-workers likely considered him “a psychopath” after his return to work. Other employees began avoiding him, which he revealed to cops only made him angrier. So, he told detectives, he began to buy guns and “practiced his movements with them” at home. Multiple times, he brought those guns to work. The affidavit states that he even brought them to the office on the day before the shooting, but he didn’t go through with the murder then as it “didn’t feel like the right time.”

(We’re pretty sure in Texas it’s legal to just bring a gun to work like that btw. Scary.)

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On the day of the shooting last Thursday, Collazo took her lunch break as usual. Merrill admitted to detectives that he followed her outside and then watched as she sat in her car. Then, per the affidavit, as she re-entered the office after lunch, “he followed her inside to her cubicle and ‘ambushed’ her, firing the gun several times.”

WTF…

The police report stated that more than two dozen co-workers witnessed the shooting. For Merrill, that was the whole point. He reportedly told detectives that Collazo’s HR notification “had caused him pain, and he wanted her to feel pain, so he intentionally planned to shoot her at work with everyone there.” How f**king delusional.

Merrill is being held in the Denton County Jail on a $10 million bond. As for Allegiance Trucks, they have indefinitely closed their Lewisville office. They also released this statement to the media:

“Thank you to the Lewisville Police for providing support to the victim’s family and the rest of our employees who, thankfully, were unharmed. We are also working closely with law enforcement during their ongoing investigation. We ask for the community’s support as our company has unfortunately joined the growing national community of workplaces affected by gun violence.”

Such a terrible, senseless tragedy.

To learn more about the impact of gun violence, visit https://www.apha.org/topics-and-issues/gun-violence.

[Image via Denton County Jail]