CHESApeake, Va., Nov 23 (Reuters) – A Walmart employee shot himself at a Chesapeake, Va., store, killing six and wounding several others, authorities said on Wednesday , the latest incident of gun violence in the United States.
Chesapeake Police Chief Mark Solsky said at a news conference that the unidentified gunman used a pistol in the shooting late Tuesday that wounded at least four people and killed them.
The latest massacre has sparked yet another round of condemnation from public officials and activists have called for greater gun control, following Saturday’s killing of five people at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday called the shooting “yet another horrific and senseless act of violence” and vowed to provide any necessary federal resources to assist in the investigation.
“This Thanksgiving, there will be more empty tables across the country,” he said in a statement, pointing to the shooting earlier this month that killed three University of Virginia students. “We must take greater action.”
In addition to the seven confirmed dead, including the shooter, four others are being treated at area hospitals, Solesky said.
Employees told the media that the shooter was a manager at the huge Walmart supercenter off Battlefield Boulevard in Chesapeake, a city of about a quarter million people south of Norfolk.
“I looked up and my manager just opened the door and he opened fire,” Brianna Taylor said, according to ABC News.
“The Battlefield Walmart was just shot by one of my managers. He killed several people. I survived, by the grace of God,” another employee, Kevin Harper, told CBS.
Tuesday’s bloodshed marked the latest upheaval in gun violence in the United States, which averages two mass shootings a day — defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed or injured, according to GunViolenceArchive.org.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is already facing growing calls for policies to address gun violence in the wake of the University of Virginia killing, said he has offered local law enforcement assistance in the investigation.
“Heinous acts of violence have no place in our community,” Jankin tweeted.
This is not the first mass shooting at Walmart, which has thousands of stores across the United States.
In August 2019, 23 people were killed in a mass shooting near the U.S.-Mexico border at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in what law enforcement called domestic terrorism. It was also the deadliest attack on a Hispanic community in modern times. Patrick Wood Crusius, 21, of Allen, Texas, who was arrested in the shooting, left a white nationalist and anti-immigrant Declaration of the theme.
Walmart said in a statement Wednesday that it was “shocked” by the violence at the Chesapeake store and was working closely with law enforcement.
Reporting by Rich McKay, Bharat Govind Gautam, Abinaya Vijayaraghavan and Shubham Kalia; Additional reporting by Juby Babu; Editing by Gerry Doyle, Nick Macfie, Gareth Jones and Mark Porter
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