By Joseph A. Slobodzian, The Philadelphia Inquirer –
PHILADELPHIA — A former employee of a cookie manufacturer in Philadelphia was found guilty of two counts of murder in the 2010 shooting that left two coworkers dead and another seriously injured.
Yvonne Hiller, 45, faces mandatory life in prison after the nonjury trial.
In earlier testimony, Kraft Foods worker Bryant Dalton said he was walking back to his station when coworker Yvonne Hiller called him over and then beckoned another colleague Tanya Wilson.
“I want you to be a witness,” Dalton said Hiller told Wilson and then turned to him and said, “I’m starting to get sick of all the games you are playing, spraying me with chemicals. I’m going to (expletive) you up.”
Thus, out of nowhere, Dalton told a Philadelphia judge Monday, began a coworker’s rant that a half-hour later on Sept. 9, 2010 turned into a bloodbath that left him seriously wounded and two other employees dead at the sprawling Kraft-Nabisco baking plant in Philadelphia.
Dalton, a mixer at the plant for three years making Oreos, Lorna Doones and other popular Nabisco cookies and crackers, was the first prosecution witness to testify.
Hiller was charged with wounding Dalton, who was shot through the neck, and killing Wilson, 47, and LaTonya Brown 36, as well as firing at other coworkers and police officers in an incident allegedly motivated by a belief coworkers were spraying her with chemicals and deer urine.
Hiller was tried by Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner without a jury in an agreement in which the District Attorney’s office withdrew plans to seek the death penalty if Hiller withdrew her plans for an insanity defense.
Dalton testified that the bullet that went through he neck remains lodged in his shoulder and that he only returned to work in February.
Once, Dalton broke down describing the killings of the two women in the plant’s third-floor employee break room.
“I told her,” Dalton said, referring to Hiller, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
