A Walmart manager opened fire on fellow employees in the break room of a Virginia store, killing six people in the country’s second high-profile mass shooting in four days, police and witnesses said.
The gunman, who apparently shot himself, was dead when officers found him, police said. There was no clear motive for the shooting, which also put four people in the hospital.
The store was busy just before the attack as people stocked up ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, a shopper told a local TV station.
Employee Briana Tyler said the overnight stocking team of about 15 or 20 people had just gotten together in the break room to go over the morning plan. As soon as the team was set to start, she said she looked up, and her manager turned around and opened fire on the staff.
“It is by the grace of God that a bullet missed me,” Tyler said.
“I saw the smoke leaving the gun, and I literally watched bodies drop. It was crazy. ”
At first, she didn’t think the shooting was real. “It was all happening so fast. I thought it was like a test type of thing. Like, if you do have an active shooter, this is how you respond. ”
Tyler, who worked with the manager just the night before, said the assailant did not aim at anyone specific.
“He was just shooting all throughout the room. It didn’t matter who he hit.
He didn’t say anything, he didn’t look at anybody in any specific type of way. ”
Chesapeake Police Chief Mark G. Solesky confirmed that the shooter, who used a pistol, was a Walmart employee but did not give his name because his family had not been notified. Solesky could not confirm whether the victims were all employees.
Employee Jessie Wilczewski told Norfolk television station WAVY that she hid under the table, and the shooter looked at her with his gun pointed at her.
He told her to go home, and she 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 tweeted that he was in contact with law enforcement officials in Chesapeake, Virginia’s second-largest city, which lies next to the seaside communities 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. ”
The attack was the second time in a little more than a week that Virginia has experienced a major shooting. Three University of Virginia football players were fatally shot on a charter bus as they returned to campus from a field trip on November 13. Two other students were wounded.
The assault at the Walmart came three days after a person opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado, killing five people and wounding 17. Last spring, the country was shaken by the deaths of 21 when a gunman stormed an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas..
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