“When (Sgt. Michael Hipps) stopped by, he just asked what we wanted to happen,” Waln recalled. “I said, ‘Right now, I want to get out of here with my life.'”
Waln has filed a complaint with the state Labor Department over six weeks’ salary and more than $1,000 in tips that he said Koester failed to pay him.
Customers of the winery, too, have reported hearing yelling as they approached the business in recent weeks, including one that invokes similar phrasing as Waln reported.
One online reviewer described “an unending list of threats,” shouted by a woman who was out of sight. Another recalled a “very loud, rude and demeaning lady” who had shouted that “she had friends that would come take who she was yelling at out for free.”
Not long after Waln departed, sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the winery with increasing frequency, including four times in the days and hours leading up to the shooting. Deputies responded to a call at the winery two hours before Koester allegedly fired the gun, according to dispatch records.
Friend, who told the Journal Star that Koester hasn’t paid him for any of the work he did, no longer works at WindCrest but says he’s stranded on the property and living in the residence with no money to gas up his truck and nowhere to go.
Friend said he was promised a $1,500-per-week salary. Instead, he encountered a boss who failed to fulfill promises, he said, and who later threatened him.