By ALEX BRANDON
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) — A shooter opened fireplace in a Walmart in Virginia late Tuesday, leaving six folks lifeless, police mentioned, within the nation’s second high-profile mass killing in a handful of days. The assailant can also be lifeless.
The retailer in Chesapeake is now secure and can probably be closed for a number of days through the investigation, Officer Leo Kosinski mentioned within the early hours of Wednesday.
It was not clear who the shooter was or what their motive is perhaps.
“I am devastated by the senseless act of violence that took place late last night in our city,” Mayor Rick W. West mentioned in a press release posted on town’s Twitter account. “Chesapeake is a tightknit community and we are all shaken by this news.”
A database run by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University that tracks each mass killing in America going again to 2006 reveals this yr has been particularly dangerous. The U.S. has now had 40 mass killings to date this yr, second to the 45 that occurred for all of 2019. The database defines a mass killing as at the very least 4 folks killed, not together with the killer.
The assault on the Walmart got here three days after an individual opened fireplace at a homosexual nightclub in Colorado, killing 5 folks and wounding 17. Earlier within the yr, the nation was shaken by the deaths of 21 when a gunman stormed an elementary faculty in Uvalde, Texas.
Tuesday’s taking pictures additionally introduced again recollections of one other at a Walmart in 2019, when a gunman police say was concentrating on Mexicans opened fireplace at a retailer in El Paso, Texas, and killed 22 folks.
Kosinski mentioned he couldn’t say how the shooter died however that he didn’t consider police fired pictures.
The taking pictures had apparently stopped when police arrived on the retailer in Chesapeake, which is Virginia’s second-largest metropolis and lies subsequent to the seaside communities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
Mike Kafka, a spokesman for Sentara Healthcare, mentioned in a textual content message that 5 sufferers from the Walmart have been being handled at Norfolk General Hospital. Their circumstances weren’t instantly accessible.
Walmart tweeted early Wednesday that it was “shocked at this tragic event.”
U.S. Sen. Mark Warner mentioned in a tweet that he was “sickened by reports of yet another mass shooting, this time at a Walmart in Chesapeake.”
State Sen. Louise Lucas echoed Warner’s sentiment, tweeting that she was “absolutely heartbroken that America’s latest mass shooting took place in a Walmart in my district.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”