Man Kills Coworker over Obsession and Long Breaks, Police Said

Lewisville, TX (WorkersCompensation.com) – Police said a Texas man killed his coworker because he was obsessed with her and got angry that she took long breaks at work and wouldn’t talk to him.

Authorities in Lewisville, Texas, said Travis Merrill, 51, allegedly shot and killed Tamhara Collazo at her desk while they were working at Allegiance Trucks.

Police said they responded to the trucking company on Oct. 17. The department’s temporary building shares a parking lot with the trucking accessory company, so the police were there within minutes.

Police said Merrill shot Collazo after she came back from a lunch break. She was shot five times and rushed to the hospital, but died from her injuries.

According to arrest records, Merrill agreed to speak to investigators after the shooting. Merrill said that he was obsessed with his coworker and began to take note of her breaks. He said that over the course of several months he got increasingly angry over Collazo taking what he thought were “unauthorized long breaks” during work hours. Additionally, he said he was angry she wasn’t paying any attention to him.

Merrill told investigators his coworker was intentionally avoiding him when she returned to work which made him even madder.

The police report on the incident said that Collazo reported Merrill’s behavior to her superiors, and told Merrill that she didn’t want him watching her when she took breaks. Merrill told detectives he was required to talk with a counselor before he could return to work after her report.

Merrill said that when he returned to work, he could tell “everyone must think he’s a psychopath,” and that Collazo avoided him. That fueled his anger, he told detectives, so he began to purchase guns.

Once he had the guns, he said he “practiced his movements with them” at home, the report said. Merrill also told investigators that Collazo “had caused him pain, and he wanted her to feel pain, so he intentionally planned to shoot her at work with everyone there,” the affidavit said.

Merrill even said that he had driven to work with his guns on his day off, but had stayed in his car in the parking lot. Police said Merrill admitted that the day before the shooting, he said he had brought the guns to work but didn’t use them because it “didn’t feel like the right time.”

The next day, police said, Merrill said he followed Collazo out to the parking lot during her lunch break and watched her sit in her car while he got his guns ready in his own car.

After she was finished with lunch, as she reentered the work building, Merrill followed her inside to her cubicle and shot her, police said.

Merrill is being held on a $10 million bond.

Allegiance Trucking offered Collazo’s family its condolences.

"We are devastated and heartbroken by the tragic loss of one of our team members who was killed in a shooting at our Lewisville office,” the company said in a statement. “The company is providing support to the victim's family and the rest of our employees who, thankfully, were unharmed, and we have closed our Lewisville office indefinitely. 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.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2020 more than 20,000 workers experienced non-fatal workplace violence that required more than one day away from work. Of those, 73 percent were female, 62 percent were between the ages of 25 and 54, 76 percent worked in the healthcare or social assistance industry, 22 percent required more than a month away from work to recover, and 22 percent involved between 3 and 5 days away from work.

That same year, the BLS reported that 392 U.S. workers died from workplace homicide. Of those, 81 percent were men, 44 percent were between the ages of 25 and 44, 28 percent were black, 18 percent were Hispanic and 30 percent performed retail-related tasks like waiting on customers.

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