In many jurisdictions, one has a “duty to retreat” from a threat before resorting to deadly force. These rules are generally more or less liberal.
In the most conservative states there may always be a duty to retreat (I’m not sure if this is still the case in any state at this point).

In less conservative manifestations of the rule, one might have no duty to retreat if they are in their own home, but would still have a duty to retreat everywhere else.

In the least conservative states, one would never have a duty to retreat.

Further, state statutes may require a person to be confronted with different levels of force before resorting to actual deadly force in self defense.
The traditional rule is that one could only respond using deadly force if they were face with an attack which a reasonable person would believe likely to result in their death or great bodily injury.

Modernly, states have modified this rule in all sorts of ways, and ostensibly some states allow the use of deadly force in response to lower levels of force than those traditionally required.

The instant facts are a little more complicated, as no deadly force was actually used, rather there was only a brandishing of a firearm, so we would need a Texas criminal defense attorney to talk about how that should play out to really figure out what was going on legally.

Nice to know that working for Sears in Texas means you don’t get to spend thanksgiving with your family.

“Officers were dispatched to the mall’s Sears store about 9 p.m. Thursday  in response to a call about a shooting, according to an incident report.”

It’s bad enough that people get trampled to death now we have to worry about people with guns? This is an American “tradition” that could not disappear fast enough.

There, I fixed the misleading headline. A first paragraph that mentions only line cutting and not the assault is also misleading, but rewriting that exceeds my pro-bono correcting of faulty information