A suspected shoplifter died early Sunday after a confrontation with Walmart employees and a security guard in the store parking lot in Lithonia, Ga., WSBTV reported.

According to the DeKalb County, Ga., police report, officers arrived around 1:30 a.m. to find the employees on top of the middle-aged man, who reportedly was caught shoplifting two DVD players. When an officer placed the man in handcuffs, he noticed the man didn’t resist him. That’s when he realized the man was unconscious and bleeding from the nose and mouth, according to WSBTV.

Paramedics transported the man to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.  

Further investigation revealed that a “physical altercation” had taken place in the parking lot, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. One of the employees had reportedly placed the man in a choke hold. The cause of death, however, has not been determined.

Dianna Gee, a Walmart spokeswoman, released a statement Sunday saying that both employees had been placed on paid leave. She said the security guard would no longer provide services for the store.

“No amount of merchandise is worth someone’s life,” Gee said in the statement, according to the Journal-Constitution. “Associates are trained to disengage from situations that would put themselves or others at risk.”

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Updated at 7:40 p.m. ET: Minutes after Pastor Kenneth Samuel finished a eulogy about how life is fleeting, shots broke out in the church parking lot. Two people were confirmed dead; their identities were not released. Two or three others were injured, police told msnbc.com, although it was unclear whether those wounded were shot.

About 500 people had come to Victory Church in Stone Mountain, Ga., on Thursday afternoon for the funeral of Ryan Guider, 19, of Decatur, who was killed May 26.

As they filed out, Samuel went to his office to change his shirt before heading to the burial site. Minutes later, the area erupted into chaos.  

“The first thing I thought to myself was, ‘My God, was anybody listening to what I was trying to say?’” Samuel said. “I think many people were. Unfortunately, not enough. The police told me even the shooter might have been in the service.”

DeKalb County spokeswoman Mekka Parish said police were trying to figure out what prompted the shooting.

"With hundreds of people there it quickly became a chaotic scene," she said.

Police initially believed that Marcus D. Ventress, who is suspected of killing Guider, was among the dead. Ventress allegedly killed Guider in retaliation for punching Ventress's mother during a home invasion. It has been confirmed that he was not among the dead, and it is unclear whether he was at the funeral, Parish said.

U.S. Marshals and DeKalb County Sheriff’s Deputies had been looking for Ventress in connection with Guider’s death. They told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Ventress is also suspected of shooting into an apartment, looking for Guider.

Five or six people are at the DeKalb County Sheriff headquarters for questioning, Parish said. 

"Something of this nature is not a common occurrence," Parish said. Top police officials met with the pastor of the church and planned to hold a forum to discuss the violence, she said.

"These are individuals who know each other, but it appears to be spilling out into a public forum," she said. "This is not a situation of individuals firing in the crowd."

Pastor Samuel, who founded the church 25 years ago, said other members of his congregation have lost their sons to violence. But a shooting after a funeral left him stunned and saddened.

“We’re at the point now where the sanctity of the gathering means nothing to people,” he said.

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Three-year-old Jalen Mattison and his sister, 1-year-old Amari Mattison.

Two young children kidnapped by a man who offered to help when the family car broke down in the middle of the night are safe, but Georgia authorities won't return them to their mother just yet.

Jalen Mattison, 3, and his one-year-old sister, Amari, were in the car with their mom when it became disabled on the side of an Atlanta-area interstate before 2 a.m. on Wednesday. Their mother told police a stranger stopped to help as she was calling a tow truck, but when she came back, she discovered he had driven off with the children in his dark green Jeep Cherokee.

The abduction set off a statewide alert until the kids were returned nearly 12 hours later by two unidentified women who said the suspect, a friend who they knew by nickname only, had dropped the kids off with them to "babysit," a DeKalb County police spokesperson told msnbc.com on Thursday.

"Shortly before 1:00 [Wednesday afternoon], the individuals that the man had dropped the kids off with became aware that they had been babysitting" abducted kids when they saw their photos on the news, DeKalb Police Spokeswoman Mekka Parish told msnbc.com. "They dropped them off at a magistrate court and notified a uniformed officer that they were in possession of the kids."

The kids weren't harmed, and the women won't be charged with a crime, she said.

But Parish told msnbc.com that there are "questions" about the mother's ability to care for her kids, and the Division of Families and Children Services was called in to investigate. The mother will not be allowed to see her children until the agency grants her permission.

News reports on Wednesday listed the mother as Ashley Mattison, 24, with no fixed address. She reportedly had been moving from hotel to hotel with the children.

Previous report: Ga. cops: 2 children reported missing found safe

There was no reason to doubt mother's story of the abduction, Parish said, and the mother faces no criminal charges related to the kidnapping. But "the DFACS investigation is something completely separate," and the mother could face charges related to her care of the children.

The suspect in the kidnapping has not been identified or caught yet, Parish told msnbc.com.

WSB.com, a Georgia NBC affiliate, reported surveillance cameras from a gas station on Interstate-20 in DeKalb County early Wednesday morning showed a man matching the suspect's description walking to a dark green Jeep Cherokee, and then driving off.

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