USA Walmart store shooting: Manager killing six people and himself at Virginia Walmart supermarket
Diplomat Times – A manager at a Walmart Inc. WMT.N store in Virginia entered a break room and opened fire on fellow employees before turning the gun on himself, according to an eyewitness.
A total of seven were killed in the shooting incident.
The dead included a 16-year-old boy who police did not identify and 70-year-old Randy Blevins, who was planning to retire within the year, a cousin wrote on Facebook.
The others were Kellie Pyle, 52, Lorenzo Gamble, 43, and Randy Blevins, 70, all from Chesapeake, and Tyneka Johnson, 22, of neighboring Portsmouth.
“I looked up and my manager just opened the door and he just opened fire,” Ms Tyler said. “He didn’t say a word. He didn’t say anything at all.”
At least four people were injured in the shooting, Chesapeake Police Chief Mark Solesky told a news conference. He did not disclose a possible motive for the shooting, but said the suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Bing was armed with a single handgun and carried multiple magazines of ammunition, according to a tweet from Chesapeake, a city of about 250,000 people south of Norfolk.
US President Joe Biden today called the shooting “yet another horrific and senseless act of violence,” vowing any federal resources needed to aid in the investigation.
“There are now even more tables across the country that will have empty seats this Thanksgiving,” he said in a statement, noting a shooting earlier this month that left three University of Virginia students dead. “We must take greater action.”
Bing worked at the company since 2010, most recently as an overnight team leader at the cavernous Walmart Supercenter just off Battlefield Boulevard in Chesapeake.
“The Battlefield Walmart just got shot up by one of my managers. He killed a couple of people. By the grace of God I made it out,” another employee, Kevin Harper, told CBS.
Jessica Burgess, a surgeon who treated victims at a Norfolk hospital, said she had contacted a colleague in Colorado Springs just two days earlier to offer support.
“So it’s very disheartening that I’m now in the same position with my colleagues from across the country checking in on me and my team,” Burgess said. “Sometimes there is only so much we can do when the injuries have already been done.”
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who was already facing stepped-up calls for policies to address gun violence after the University of Virginia killings, ordered flags at local, state and federal buildings to be flown at half-staff.
Walmart, which has thousands of stores across the country, has been hit by gun violence before.
In August 2019, 23 people were killed at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border in an act described as domestic terrorism by law enforcement. It was also the deadliest attack on the Hispanic community in the United States in modern times.
Walmart enacted new restrictions on gun and ammunition sales following that 2019 shooting, as it had after other shootings at its stores.
Walmart in a statement on Wednesday said it was “shocked” at the violence at the Chesapeake store and it was working closely with law enforcement.
“The devastating news of last night’s shooting at our Chesapeake, VA store at the hands of one of our associates has hit our Walmart family hard,” Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Input Via Reuters | Dawn, Editing by Shashi Kumar & Roshan Bilung .
