Man shoots KFC employee when store runs out of corn

A corn-craving KFC customer shot an employee after the store ran out of the tasty yellow grain.

The employee was hospitalized in critical but stable condition, reported KMOV-TV. The suspect fled.

The shooting happened just after 6:30 p.m. Monday, when a man in his 40s or 50s pulled up to the Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-through speaker and put in an order that included corn.

Employees at the store, in St. Louis’s Central West End, told him the store had no corn left. The man started threatening them through the speaker box. Later, he returned to the drive-through window brandishing a handgun.

He then shot the 25-year-old, unidentified employee who came out to respond, reported the Riverfront Times.

Police were still seeking the suspect on Tuesday.

The shooting adds to a list of disgruntled customers opening fire over food, including several incidents in the New York City area and a mayo kerfuffle in Atlanta.

In May a disgruntled customer shot a beloved Chinese food deliveryman in Queens in a dispute about duck sauce. At first it was thought that Zhiwen Yan, 45, had been the victim of a stray bullet. But it later turned out to be intentional, leading to an arrest and murder charge for 51-year-old Glenn Hirsch in June.

In August a customer’s son shot a Brooklyn McDonald’s worker in the face during a spat over cold French fries. Matthew Webb, 23, was first put on life support and later died.

Old-fashioned greed felled Kristal Bayron-Nieves, 19, who had been requesting safer day shifts from her job at Burger King in East Harlem before being shot in a holdup in January this year.