One Customer Arrested for Shooting Employee, Another Faces Day in Court

Portsmouth, VA (WorkersCompensation.com) – A man accused of killing a North Carolina Waffle House employee over his bacon taking too long has been arrested in Virginia, police said, while a customer who stabbed an on-duty postal employee had his say in court.

Police said Florwer Carlin Lizano, Jr., was arrested on Jan. 24 in Portsmouth, Va. for the September killing of Burlie Dawson Locklear, 18, a line cook at a Laurinburg, North Carolina Waffle House.

According to court records, police were called to the Waffle House around 12:45 a.m. on Sept. 13, for a report of shots fired. When they arrived witnesses told them Lizano had entered the restaurant and ordered food. However, employees at the restaurant said the man became “agitated and verbally abusive toward the staff,” the Laurinburg Police Department said in a Facebook post at the time.

“A man, he was at the back of the line. The man, he just had one All-Star. And I knew I had to cook all of them plates. And I told them to give me like 15 or 20 minutes. He came back, like later, asking why his food was taking so long (and) that it didn’t take that long to cook bacon,” Jaylen Madden, who worked there as a cook told WPDE at the time of the incident.

After receiving his food, Lizano walked to his car. There, he pulled out a gun and shot twice toward the restaurant, shooting Locklear.

Locklear was taken to a hospital where he later died. Madden, Locklear’s girlfriend, said she learned about the incident when Locklear came to her and said he’d been shot.

“He said, ‘Bae he shot me.’ So I dropped the phone and he ran back there where I was at,” Madden said Locklear pulled up his shirt and showed her a gunshot wound in his abdomen.

“I said, ‘Baby, it’s going to be OK.’ I was thinking he was in shock. He was holding his stomach. He said, ‘no bae, my stomach.’ And he pulled his apron and his shirt up. And I seen where he was shot in his stomach,” Madden told WPDE.

Lizano fled the scene after the shooting. After a four month manhunt, Lizano was arrested, police said in a statement. He will be extradited from Virginia to North Carolina.

Another customer who stabbed an employee, has been arrested in New York. Officials said, a woman accused of stabbing an on-duty postal worker while the two stood in line at a deli has been indicted on murder charges.

Jaia Cruz, 24, was arrested hours after the Jan. 2 stabbing death of U.S. Postal Service worker Ray Hodges inside the deli. Officials said Cruz admitted to the killing telling investigators she laughed as Hodges died on the deli floor.

“I hope he’s maggot food,” Jaia Cruz, 24, said court records showed. “I killed him laughing. Oh, well. I’ll piss on his grave.”

Cruz was indicted Jan. 23 for second-degree murder. She pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail. The defendant told detectives Hodges accused her of cutting the sandwich line at the deli and then ridiculing her with homophobic remarks. Cruz, at 6 foot, 5 inches, is a transgender woman.

“I did spit on him because he called me a f—-t,” Cruz’s confession reads. “I called him a dirty monkey. You said hurtful words, so I said hurtful words to you.”

Cruz said that the dispute escalated and that Hodges struck her three times before she pulled out a knife in self-defense.

“I told him, ‘You come to me and I’ll kill you,'” Cruz told investigators. “No motherf—-rs are going to put their hands on me no more. He tried to mess with me because I’m trans and I poked him up.”

Cruz told officers that she blacked out during the attack and that she suffers from “mental issues.”

Witnesses to the attack said she appeared to be on drugs during the incident. One witness told police that she and another woman tried several times to break up the fight but that neither party would back down.

“I got in between them — twice,” said Janet Rich, told the New York Post. “There was another woman with dreadlocks [who] said, ‘Don’t do this. You have a good job. Let this go.’”

Rich’s cell phone footage showed the postal worker on the ground as others try to help him. First responders on the scene took Hodges to a nearby hospital where he later died.

Cruz fled to her apartment just a few doors down from the deli, officials said, and was arrested later that night.

Share This Article: