HALIFAX – The accused man in the alleged Halifax shooting plot was no longer employed when arrested.
Until recently Randall Shepherd, 20, of Halifax worked at Blue Ocean Contact Centers on Bayers Rd.
“Our company can confirm that a former employee was arrested and charged in relation to the planned attack,” said Amy Bennet Roach, the director of communications at Blue Ocean Contact Centers. “The individual was not an employee of our company at the time of the arrest.”
Shepherd’s Facebook page says he works at Blue Ocean Contact Centers, and a friend who worked there with him said Shepherd worked there for about a year.
The friend, who didn’t want to be named, said she didn’t realize he wasn’t working there anymore and had seen him at work just a few days before his arrest on Feb. 13. The company wouldn’t confirm whether Shepherd had quit or was fired.
“This has been a shocking event for our whole community. We have support in place for any employees who may want to access it,” said Bennet Roach. “Our priority is supporting our people.”
Shepherd’s friend said the company sent out an email offering counselling services for any employees. She described Shepherd as a “nice” guy who she used to go on cigarette breaks with.
“It’s really weird that a guy I worked with was (allegedly) going to kill a bunch of people,” she said. “He was a weird person but he didn’t seem like he would hurt anyone, he was always nice to me.”
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Shepherd, and the two other accused in this case, Lindsay Souvannarath of Geneva, IL and James Gamble of Timberlea, N.S., all had extensive online footprints and are linked to Tumblr blogs featuring graphic images of Nazi symbols, the Columbine school shooting, and sexualized violence. Shepherd’s friend said he was on Tumblr all the time at work, and while she knew he was into heavy metal music, she didn’t know about his other interests online. “I wasn’t expecting the white supremacist, Nazi worshiping,” she said.
She said she was “blindsided” by the charges facing Shepherd. “This is the last thing I would have expected, he was happier than ever.”
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