3 Fast Food Workers Killed in Tenn.

SMYRNA, Tenn. (AP) â€” Three fast-food workers were found shot to death Wednesday in an apparent robbery. <br><br>The shootings apparently happened after Captain D's closed at midnight, Sgt. Scott

Wednesday, July 12th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

SMYRNA, Tenn. (AP) â€” Three fast-food workers were found shot to death Wednesday in an apparent robbery.

The shootings apparently happened after Captain D's closed at midnight, Sgt. Scott Byers said.

The first body was found at about 2:30 a.m. in the driver's seat of a car outside a BigK discount store behind the restaurant. Signs that the man worked at Captain D's led police there, where the bodies of two more men were found in a backroom cooler.

The victims' families met Wednesday morning with police and grief counselors. The victim's identities and details about the shootings were to be released after all relatives were notified, Byers said.

The restaurant is 20 miles southeast of Nashville along Interstate 24, in a business district crowded with stores and restaurants.

The slayings reminded some onlookers of three deadly restaurant robberies that occurred in the state in 1997.

``I was scared to death after the Paul Reid incidents,'' said Angie Ryman, 21, who works at a local McDonald's with her fiance. ``Today, we're going to look for other jobs.''

Reid, a part-time cook, terrorized Middle Tennessee over three months in 1997, killing seven fast-food workers at three restaurants. Two victims worked at a Captain D's in suburban Nashville.

The last of Reid's three trials was in May. He was convicted of all seven murders and received seven death sentences, the most ever received in Tennessee.

Also in May, five Wendy's employees in New York City were shot to death in a robbery at the fast-food restaurant. Two others were wounded. Two men, including a former employee, have been charged in the killings.