GREENVILLE, SC (WSPA) – A man identified as the shooter who opened fire in a high-rise building in Cincinnati on Thursday was previously charged with trespassing at a business in the Upstate.
He was also a student at Westside High School and graduated 2008, according to the school.
According to Greenville Police Department, Omar Enrique Santa-Perez was arrested after separate trespassing incidents at Confluence Watersport in Greenville on Oct. 1, 2014.
The first incident took place around 6:30 a.m.
According to the police report, officers responded to the business on Mauldin Road in reference to a former employee who was refusing to leave.
When they arrived on scene, officers made contact with the store operations manager who said he had fired Santa-Perez and told him to leave.
Santa-Perez reportedly refused to leave and said he wanted written documentation of his firing.
The operations manager said he wanted Santa-Perez placed on a trespass notice at the store and said that over the past week Santa-Perez had been throwing items — tools — and was “not acting right.”
According to the report, the operations manager was concerned about what Santa-Perez might do.
Officers then made contact with Santa-Perez, who was sitting in the lobby, and told him that he had been asked to leave and that he was being placed on trespass notice. Officers said he was advised of the consequences should he return to the business.
A second Greenville Police Department report, also dated Oct. 1, 2014, said Santa-Perez returned to Confluence Watersport at 8:40 a.m. and refused to leave.
Officers found Santa-Perez lying on his back on the sidewalk in front of the store.
According to the report, Santa-Perez was asked to stand up and officers searched him for weapons and was then asked to sit back down.
Officers made contact with the complainant who said that Santa-Perez had been fired the previous night and was refusing to leave, and said other police officers had responded earlier that day to remove him from the property.
When asked why he returned to the business, Santa-Perez appeared upset and disoriented. He reportedly responded to officers’ questions with strange answers.
“The suspect mumbled something about the war and the economy, but for the most part talked about that he was upset that he was terminated,” according to the report.
Officers then asked Santa-Perez to leave the business, but he said he wasn’t leaving and started to cry.
According to the report, the officers called in back-up and continued to talk to Santa-Perez, asking if there was anything they could do to get him to leave the business, and he said no.
When back-up arrived on the scene, Santa-Perez stood and refused to sit on the ground.
He also reportedly refused to turn around and put his hands behind his back and began to back away from officers and was clinching his hands into fists at his side.
The officers grabbed Santa-Perez, tried to put handcuffs on him, but he began to struggle.
He was then brought to the ground by the officers and was handcuffed.
Santa-Perez was arrested and charged with trespassing after notice and taken to the Greenville County Detention Center.
The 2014 incident reports indicate that Santa-Perez was a resident in Anderson, S.C. at the time.
On Thursday — Sept.6, 2018 — Santa-Perez reportedly went into a building in Cincinnati and began shooting.
Three people were killed and two others were injured in the shooting. Santa-Perez was later shot and killed by police.