A Walmart manager opened fire on fellow employees in a Virginia store’s break room, killing six people in the country’s second high-profile mass shooting in four days.
Chesapeake Authorities Chief Mark G. Solesky said the gunman, who had shot himself, was dead when police found him. There was no obvious motivation for the shooting, which injured four persons.
A customer informed a local TV station that the supermarket was bustling just before Tuesday night’s attack as people stocked up for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Employee Briana Tyler stated that staff had congregated in the break room as usual before their shifts.
“I looked up, and my manager just opened the door and he just opened fire,” she told ABC’s “Good Morning America,” adding that “multiple people” dropped to the floor.
“He didn’t say a word, he didn’t say anything at all,” she said.
Solesky stated that the shooter, who was armed with a handgun, was a Walmart employee but declined to identify him since his family had not been told. The police chief could not ascertain if all the casualties were workers.
Employee Jessie Wilczewski said she hid beneath the table when the shooter approached her with his rifle pointing at her, ordered her to go home, and left.
“It didn’t even look real until you could feel the … ‘pow-pow-pow,’ you can feel it,” Wilczewski said. “I couldn’t hear it at first because I guess it was so loud, I could feel it.”
Gov. Glenn Youngkin said on Twitter that he communicated with law enforcement authorities in Chesapeake, Virginia’s second-largest city, located between the coastal towns of Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
“Our hearts break with the community of Chesapeake this morning,” Youngkin wrote. “Heinous acts of violence have no place in our communities.”
Virginia has seen a significant shooting for the second time in less than a week. Aboard Nov. 13, three University of Virginia football players were fatally shot on a charter bus returning to school from a field trip. Two more pupils were injured.
“I am horrified by the senseless act of violence that occurred late last night in our city,” Mayor Rick W. West said in a statement released Wednesday on the city’s Twitter account. “Chesapeake is a tight-knit community, and we are all shaken by this news.”