On the eve of the big family holiday of Thanksgiving, a manager at a Walmart supermarket in the eastern United States shot and killed six people Tuesday night before killing himself at the scene, police said Wednesday.
The shooter, identified as 31-year-old Andre Bing, was armed with a pistol and had several magazines in his possession, said the town of Chesapeake in Virginia, where the events occurred.
He held the position of “night shift leader and had worked with us since 2010,” retail giant Walmart said in a statement. Police searched the suspect’s house on Wednesday in order to identify the motive for the murder, which is still unknown.
“He didn’t say anything at all”
“I looked up and my manager opened the door (to the supermarket employee bathroom, editor’s note) and I started shooting,” Briana Tyler told ABC. “She didn’t say anything, she didn’t say anything at all.”
Authorities said the shooter killed two people in the break room and killed himself there. Another victim was discovered “towards the front of the store” and three others “were transported to nearby hospitals but succumbed to their injuries.”
The youngest of the bullet-riddled victims was 16, authorities said. Four people were hospitalized on Wednesday, police said in the morning.
just before thanksgiving
In front of the store, where some fifteen investigators were working on Wednesday, including some federal police officers, now stands an impromptu memorial of flowers and candles in honor of the victims.
“I can’t imagine losing someone right before Thanksgiving,” said Susan Neal Matousek, a 57-year-old retired teacher who visited the site to “offer her condolences.”
President Joe Biden lamented a “horrific and senseless act of violence” on the eve of Thanksgiving, “one of the most cherished holidays that unites us as Americans and as families.”
“Even more tables across the country will have empty chairs this Thanksgiving,” he said in a statement.
This drama is the latest in a series of murders in the United States: four days earlier, a shooting in Colorado Springs left five dead and at least 18 injured at an LGBT+ club. And the week before, already in Virginia, three members of the University of Virginia football team had been murdered by a former teammate.
The police received a first emergency call at 10:12 p.m. on Tuesday night and the first police officers entered the Walmart store four minutes later in this city located 240 km south of the capital, Washington, explained Mark Solesky, chief of Chesapeake Police.
“shocked”
About 50 customers were in the store when the shooting broke out, according to a Chesapeake police statement.
“We are shocked by this tragic event,” Walmart tweeted Wednesday.
“We mourned with the Chesapeake community this morning,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said.
The phenomenon of employee shootings in the workplace is not new to the United States. From the 1970s to the 1990s, employees or former employees killed about 40 people in a series of attacks on postal services, so much so that Americans invented the phrase “going postal” to describe workplace violence.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been more than 600 mass shootings (at least four people killed or injured) in the United States since the beginning of this year.
Supermarkets are particularly affected. A study by the organization Guns Down America, based on figures from the Gun Violence Archive between January 2020 and May 2022, found that major supermarket chains saw shootings in their stores an average of four times a week.
However, the issue of toughening the legal framework around firearms remains politically sensitive, and Congress cannot come to an agreement in this area.
Source: BFM TV
