According to police, Charles Smith, 27, entered the Walmart at 1955 S. Stapley Dr. on Dec. 19 intending to film pranks for social media platforms.

Instead, police said Smith grabbed a can of Hot Shot Ultra Bed Bug and Flea Killer from a shelf without paying for it and then sprayed the pesticide on various vegetables, fruit and rotisserie chickens that were available for purchase.

Smith recorded his face, the pesticide can and the act of him spraying its contents. He later posted the recording online.

  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Now, this could qualify as terrorism.

    Not a single murder of a psychopathic indirect mass murderer CEO.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        you’d be surprised. A fairly large number of them are quite miserly, even in their personal lives.

        • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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          5 days ago

          The CEO types have people who are responsible for filing the fridge and pantry. Those people probably shop at Walmart just like everyone else.

      • theUwUhugger@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        What was the political motive behind Luigi YAHOOO-ing the ceo?

        I would recommend you reading his manifesto as long as you can, its not long but its being taken down from pretty much everwhere

        • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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          5 days ago

          It’s been publicallly stated neither him nor his parents were customers of that specific insurance company, so the manifesto is likely fake.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              5 days ago

              So… do you think he was a customer, and they just haven’t found out yet?

              Like you said, it shouldn’t be hard to find out. Therefore, he almost certainly wasn’t a customer. They’d know.

                • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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                  5 days ago

                  United already has a serious public image problem with their 30%-35% claim denial rate.

                  How much worse would it be if they said, “yeah, Luigi’s back problems could have been easily fixed by surgery, but we decided to deny that claim and put him on painkillers for the rest of his life.” They’d be admitting that one of their many fark-ups got their CEO killed. And that’s not going to help their case if this ever goes to trial.

                  • theUwUhugger@lemmy.world
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                    5 days ago

                    I am not an american so I wouldn’t know, but surely your police force wouldn’t lie in the interest of a company, would it?

                    Or like, there would be massive legal backlash if the company disclosed false info to the police, no?

                    What is going on over the great puddle?

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  5 days ago

                  That’s just how cops talk. Police are trained to speak as vaguely as possible in order to not give the defense any ammunition. If they say “he was not a customer” then the defense can use that in the trial, and why would they want to help the defense?

                  Now answer my question. Do you think he was a customer, and they just haven’t found out yet?

                  • theUwUhugger@lemmy.world
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                    5 days ago

                    How on the bloody earth would assassinating his character help his defense? Maybe if they were lying, that could help I guess?

                    He is either ought to be, or he is a set up! It is very suspicious that after a week of headless panicking they found the suspect with the murder weapon and an apparently false paper explaining that he did it

              • Hello Hotel@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                They are not giving a definitive answer and merly giving their (less legally binding) professional opinion. Its like they dont want to know or publish an absolute.

          • rumba@lemmy.zip
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            5 days ago

            The manifesto they found on him was completely innocuous. What people are talking about that you consider might be fake is his online post history of the years on several platforms. no way they backfilled several services for that.

          • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 days ago

            Now that’s a leap of logic if I’ve ever seen one.

            If the manifesto is believed to be real and Luigi is the shooter, he did it because UHC is the biggest and denies the most claims by a long shot, a third or so, and then one of their medicare disadvantage plans uses AI to deny 90% of claims.

            The fact that he’s a class traitor and this wasn’t a personal vendetta makes it even more respectable in my book.

            • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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              3 days ago

              The “manifesto” I saw claimed his family were covered by UHC, which it seems is false. That’s the only manifesto I’ve seen that claims to be his.

              • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                3 days ago

                https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

                To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

      • Hello Hotel@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Honestly, there doesnt have to be a political motivation. If its political, they would want to say their message and not just give control of the narritive to the media.

      • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        I didn’t see what store it was but maybe he was trying to kill all of the flies in his local Whole Foods.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I mean, I get your point…but not every story has to be compared to other stories. In this case Luigi. I also see other people bring up politics during stories that have nothing to do with politics.

      And I wonder why people do that. Why talk about an unrelated topic when there’s already an interesting topic?

      I guess it’s not as bad as reddit, where they would instead just post a random unrelated quote from the office, but still…

      • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        It’s quite simply what’s on people’s minds right now. It was a major event, it outlines some of the systemic inequalities, and people are interested in the subject.

        • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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          5 days ago

          Yeah.

          It’s also just fun to talk about because it probably makes US healthcare CEOs nervous.

          After all they’ve done to the rest of us, it’s nice to think of them feeling nervous. If they’re not going to feel our grief, or appropriate remorse, or empathy, at least they can feel nervous.

          • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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            5 days ago

            There’s a good book about capitalism and what happens when the CEO class gets nervous about the underclass getting tired of their shit. It’s called The Iron Heel by Jack London. It’s what inspired 1984 and is the start of the dystopian future sci-fi writing.

            The basic premise is it never ends like the French Revolution when the workers revolt because the regular person has too much invested in the status quo.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        It’s a current event being compared to another current event. One about a murder, and the other potentially attempted homicide, depending on the pesticide used. Seems to be pretty related to me, regardless of any politics.

        Just because they call it a “prank”, and the media uses the same shitty term, that doesn’t make spraying pesticides on food for unsuspecting citizens to grab any less dangerous.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          One has a potential villain above the law and a moral purpose in removing him, or is at least a sympathetic figure striking out at one of the many causes of our misery, and who we can applaud. There is a root cause in desperate need of fixing but corporate voices in search of profit who are somehow more important than people’s lives

          The other is threatening people’s lives and health by contaminating food, and dismissing as a “prank” for clicks. He needs plenty of time in jail and to forfeit whatever cash those clicks might bring. There is no morality play, no political difference, only exploiting the worst of humanity for cash

      • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 days ago

        Politics is everywhere because it affects every aspect of our lives even if we consider ourselves apolitical and don’t pay attention to the news or politics.

        This story isn’t going away because even amongst the apolitical our healthcare system has fucked over nearly everyone either directly or a close loved one. The only people not getting fucked over are those on the tippy top. Even the upper middle class - if they get cancer they can lose their life’s savings. And our end of life care is essentially vultures picking clean a body only replace vultures with the health care system that keeps people alive for far too long past their natural life span to milk every last cent out of them.

      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        It reminds me of the dupes on Facebook that comment “must have been a Kamala voter” on every video of someone doing something stupid.

      • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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        5 days ago

        Corporate needs you to find the difference between this story and this story.

        (They’re the same story)