A black Muslim who beheaded a woman and stabbed another worker at an Oklahoma food plant was fired right before the attack

Alton Alexander Nolen, 30, was terminated from his job at Vaughan Foods processing plant just before the rampage in Moore, Oklahoma, just outside Oklahoma City, said Sgt. Jeremy Lewis of the Moore Police Department. After “he was terminated, he drove to the front of the business, running into a vehicle, exited his vehicle, entered the business, where he encountered the first victim, Colleen Hufford, 54, and began assaulting her with a knife. He did kill Colleen and he did sever her head.” A second woman, identified as 43-year-old Traci Johnson, survived the attack, thanks to the intervention of another co-worker — the company’s chief operating officer Mark Vaughan, an Oklahoma County reserve deputy — who shot and wounded Nolen. Johnson was hospitalized in stable condition with “numerous knife wounds,” according to police. “This off-duty deputy definitely saved Traci’s life,” Lewis said. “This was not going to stop if he didn’t stop it. He’s obviously a hero in this situation. It’s very tragic that someone did lose their life, but it could have gotten a lot worse. This guy was definitely not going to stop. He didn’t stop until he was shot.” Nolen recently had been trying to convert co-workers to Islam, Lewis said. “After conducting interviews with co-workers of Nolen’s, information was obtained that he recently started trying to convert some of his coworkers to the Muslim religion.”