Walmart Evacuated For Gun Threat In Western New York

It’s better to be safe than sorry, and thankfully our first responders took the necessary precautions when they received calls warning them of a potential gun threat at Walmart. 

Customers and employees were urged to evacuate the Walmart, located at 4133 Veterans Memorial Dr., in Batavia on Wednesday following a report of a potential gun threat. 

Police officers from the City of Batavia told WGRZ that they got a call “about a person loading a shotgun in the Walmart parking lot” before walking into the store with the gun in hand. 

That would be scary for anyone to witness, so it makes sense why someone would alert the authorities to what they saw in the parking lot.

Many people started to be evacuated from the Walmart as the police responded to the incident and thankfully, there ended up being no threat but just a little misunderstanding.

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The person walking into the store with a “shotgun” was actually holding a pellet gun. The pellet gun was purchased from Walmart, and he was walking into the store with it to return the item since it wasn’t working properly. 

As a result, heavy police presence arrived at the Walmart to investigate what was going on, and thankfully it was just a guy trying to return his pellet gun. 

Brian Frieday, the Genesee County Chief Deputy Road Patrol, talked with the Batavia Daily News about the situation on Wednesday.

“We ended up getting reports that the subject was outside,” Frieday said. “Found him…the air rifle was located inside.” 

“It was not in fact a shotgun,” Frieday clarified. 

“He had made a call to the Walmart store earlier in the day just to see what he should do procedurally to return an air rifle [and] not to cause alarm,” he said. “A citizen in the parking lot saw him with that air rifle and what she thought was loading something into that.” 

“There’s a lot of imitation pistols and rifles that do look like real guns, and there’s a lot of real guns that people try to portray as imitation handguns or firearms,” Frieday said. 

It’s a good thing that somebody called about what they saw in the parking lot. If you see something, you should say something, because you never know unless you do. 

Thankfully, this was a huge misunderstanding, and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. 

Frieday told WGRZ he was glad that the incident was reported. "It's a little bit of an inconvenience compared to everything we're seeing around the country now,” he said. 

No criminal charges were filed, according to the Sheriff’s office.