The shooting, which occurred on Monday evening in the city’s Central West End neighbourhood, was confirmed by police, who said the injured employee was taken to the hospital for treatment.

An employee of the American fast-food restaurant, KFC, in St. Louis, United States has been reportedly shot.

He was shot by a customer who got angry because the restaurant told him they had run out of corn.

The shooting, which occurred on Monday evening in the city’s Central West End neighbourhood, was confirmed by police, who said the injured employee was taken to the hospital for treatment.

According to investigators, the man attempted to place an order in the restaurant’s drive-thru lane. When he learned the store was out of corn, he became enraged and threatened employees, according to police.

When he approached the drive-thru window, the man was armed with a handgun. According to police, a 25-year-old employee who went outside to speak with the driver returned to the restaurant and stated that he had been shot.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the driver had not been apprehended.

In the United States, the surge in gun violence comes as firearm purchases rose to record levels in 2020 and 2021, with more than 43 million guns estimated to have been purchased during that period, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal data on gun background checks. At the same time, the rate of gun deaths in those years hit the highest level since 1995, with more than 45,000 fatalities each year.

Guns are used in most suicides and are almost entirely responsible for an overall rise in homicides across the country from 2018 to 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.