Greg Morris spent most of Saturday acting like Luke Skywalker with a lightsaber. At least that’s what local fast food workers say. He’d been waving his machete around all over town, starting at Walmart. It took police from four separate cities in the vicinity of South Ogden, Utah to corner the 27-year-old in a Chic-Fil-A parking lot. Thankfully, nobody was hurt.
Maniac with a machete
The unnamed first “victim” of the machete wielding maniac was minding his own business, on Saturday, January 15. As usual, he was wandering the aisles of the local Walmart on Wall Avenue.
That’s when “a man he had parked next to approached him in the store and told him ‘not to go anywhere.'” He didn’t listen and left. As he was getting in his car, he noticed his assailant approaching.
According to the police reports, as “the man was getting into his car, he saw the other man, later identified as Greg Morris, 27, now armed with a machete, approaching him.” He must have bought the weapon at Walmart.
“He drove away and called police.” As he was walking up to his car, the woman in the car he parked by “yelled something at him, but he couldn’t make out what she was upset about.”
That’s when he saw Morris and his machete. Store security confirms the tale. Police note Walmart camera footage “shows exactly what the victim describes.”
The video also proves that Morris was hallucinating when he thought the man “nearly hit his fiancée and child.” Surveillance video clearly shows “the victim pull into a parking spot normally at Walmart, and he did not appear to be near to hitting Morris’ family.”
Popeye’s for lunch
South Ogden police soon got a call from Popeye’s Chicken on Wall, where an employee reported “a man had been threatening people in the drive-thru lane and then approached the restaurant door.” Morris told police he was “arguing with a drive-through speaker employee who he believed was ‘being rude.’”
Her side of the story is that “Morris was being belligerent and employees told him to leave.” That was before he came “to the front door brandishing a huge machete.”
Acting fast, as soon as she saw the blade, the employee “ran past customers inside and shut the door to prevent Morris from entering, believing that if he was able to get inside he would hurt someone.”
The suspect later tried to convince police that “he was only going into Popeye’s to get lunch, but the doors were locked, so he left.” Another witness advised “Morris swung a machete out of his car window at drivers in the next lane as they drove down the road.”
He must have been craving chicken. Since he couldn’t get Popeye’s, he headed to Chic-Fil-A, a few blocks away. That’s where the cops discovered the machete in the back seat of his gray Mazda.
After they filled out the paperwork, he was booked into the Weber County Jail “without bail on suspicion of two counts of third-degree felony aggravated assault.“