A newly filed wrongful death lawsuit alleges Lowe\u2019s in Scranton ignored red flags and escalating warning signs from one of its employees, culminating when the man brought a gun to work in June and murdered a coworker.\n<\/p>\n
The lawsuit contends that the death of Lowe\u2019s employee Jeffrey Moeller, 44, was entirely preventable had the company not \u201cegregiously ignored the danger\u201d posed to him by his coworker, Christopher Wasnetsky, who \u201charbored deep personal animosity\u201d toward him, according to the lawsuit filed in Lackawanna County Court on Monday by Philadelphia-based Ross Feller Casey LLP.\n<\/p>\n
The law firm filed the suit on behalf of Keisha Moeller of Scranton, who is Moeller\u2019s widow and the administratrix of his estate. The Moellers had three daughters ages 6, 8 and 11, according to a news release.<\/p>\n
On June 14, Wasnetsky, 36, brought a 9mm handgun to work at Lowe\u2019s on Viewmont Drive, shooting Moeller in the chest while he worked and then shooting him again in the head, according to police.<\/p>\n
Shortly before the shooting, Wasnetsky emailed Lowe\u2019s and told the company it could have prevented Moeller\u2019s killing, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit points to multiple instances of Moeller raising concerns to management about Wasnetsky, including that he had \u201cserious safety concerns\u201d and that Wasnetsky \u201cposes a significant risk to himself and others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wasnetsky, who made unfounded claims to Lowe\u2019s management about Moeller, including that he hid forklift keys and changed the font size on his computer to annoy him, also told the company that Moeller had him \u201cphysically shaking with anger\u201d and that he \u201ccouldn\u2019t sleep one day because he was making me so angry,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit seeks more than $50,000 in compensatory and punitive damages on counts of negligence and recklessness, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraudulent misrepresentation and inducement and wrongful death.<\/p>\n
Wasnetsky of Benton Twp. remains in Lackawanna County Prison without bail on counts of first- and third-degree murder after waiving his preliminary hearing in October.<\/p>\n
Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A newly filed wrongful death lawsuit alleges Lowe\u2019s in Scranton ignored red flags and escalating warning signs from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[182,139,178,180,179,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-61649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-local-news","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-scranton","11":"tag-scranton-headlines","12":"tag-scranton-news","13":"tag-top-stories-stt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}