Kroger Shooting: Gunman Kills 1 and Wounds 14 in Tennessee Store – The authorities said the suspect was found dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot, in Collierville, Tenn., a Memphis suburb.
COLLIERVILLE, Tenn. — Several victims who were shot when a gunman opened fire inside a grocery store in Collierville, Tenn., on Thursday, are still “battling” their injuries, the town’s police chief said on Friday. The gunman killed one person and injured at least 14 others as panicked employees and customers ran for safety, hiding in freezers and locked offices.
“They were doing what they had been trained to do — run, hide, fight,” the chief, Dale Lane, said at a news conference on Thursday. The training, he added, “saved people’s lives today.”
The early afternoon shooting inside a Kroger store in a bustling commercial area of Collierville, about 30 miles east of Memphis, left officials and residents stunned. Shortly after receiving a report of the shooting about 1:30 p.m., officers flooded the store, going from aisle to aisle and room to room, helping injured victims and escorting employees out of hiding. One worker who was on the roof was brought to safety.
The gunman was found in the back of the store, and was believed to have been killed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Chief Lane said. The man’s vehicle was still in the parking lot, he said.
On Friday, Chief Lane declined to identify the type of weapon the suspect had used. He said the gunman was a “third-party vendor for Kroger.”
Chief Lane said 10 of the shooting victims were store employees and five were customers. “We didn’t lose anybody overnight,” he said of the 14 victims who were taken to hospitals, but added, “There are still some people that are battling.”
Forty-four employees were inside the store when the gunman began shooting, turning a typical afternoon of shopping and working into a scene of bloodshed and terror.
Brignetta Dickerson, who said she had worked at the Kroger for 32 years, told local reporters that she was at a cash register when she heard gunshots.
She said she ran with several co-workers and customers to the back of the store and into a receiving area for deliveries. But the gunman “came right behind us and started shooting and kept on shooting, shooting, shooting,” Ms. Dickerson told WREG-TV.
An employee was shot in the head and a customer was shot in the stomach, she said. The man who was shot in the head was in his 20s, and asked Ms. Dickerson to call his mother, she told WREG. Ms. Dickerson said she called but was unable to reach her.
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A Kroger employee after the shooting.Credit…Patrick Lantrip/Daily Memphian, via Associated Press
“My only concern was my co-workers and my customers,” Ms. Dickerson said, adding that she told the people who were with her, “Just sit down and relax and you’ll be OK.”
Chief Lane on Friday identified the woman who was killed as Olivia King. Her son, Wes King, posted on Facebook that she had been shot in the chest and died at a hospital after CPR was unsuccessful.
“I apologize for the graphic details, but this type of crime needs to stop being glossed over and sanitized,” Mr. King wrote. “No one deserves this.”
A neighbor of Ms. King’s, Aahil Shermohammed, said he would never forget her smile.
“She was always checking up on me for no reason — and it was always nice when you’re having a bad day to have someone like that smile at you,” he said.
Chief Lane said that police officers had searched the home of the suspect, Uk Thang, 29, late Thursday and were examining evidence seized from it, including electronic evidence. He would not comment on possible motives for the shooting.
Laura Kebede contributed reporting from Collierville. Alyssa Lukpat, Neil Vigdor and Sophie Kasakove also contributed reporting.
A community reels: ‘There is no making sense of that.’
The aftermath of the Kroger shooting on Thursday afternoon at a Kroger in Collierville, Tenn.Credit…Houston Cofield for The New York Times
The fatal shooting on Thursday afternoon sent shock waves through Collierville, Tenn., a Memphis suburb of about 51,000.
Dale Lane, the town’s police chief, called it “the most horrific event that has occurred in Collierville history.”
Local news stations showed a line of ambulances at the Kroger grocery store with their lights flashing, as well as a group of employees gathered in the parking lot. Some stood in a circle, praying.
“Lives have been lost and there is no making sense of that,” said Deborah Suddarth, the senior pastor of Collierville United Methodist Church, a congregation just down the road from the store. “It is painful.”
She said the shooting happened at a moment when the community was already mourning people who had died of Covid-19. Her predecessor as senior pastor was killed by the virus several months ago.
Kroger said in a statement that it was “deeply saddened by the incident” and was cooperating with local law enforcement officials. The store will remain closed while the police investigation continues, the company said.
The woman who was killed is remembered as ‘kind, generous, caring, selfless.’
Embracing outside the scene of a shooting at a Kroger Shooting grocery store in Collierville, Tenn., on Thursday.Credit…Joe Rondone/The Commercial Appeal, via Associated Press
Olivia King was a regular parishioner at Catholic Church of the Incarnation in Collierville, Tenn., attending a service there on Thursday morning only hours before she was killed in a mass shooting at a Kroger grocery store.
“Everyone needs to be more like Olivia,” said Maureen Fraser, the vice mayor of Collierville, who had been friends with Ms. King since they both moved to the town in the mid-1990s. “Kind, generous, caring, selfless.”
Ms. Fraser said that one Christmas season, Ms. King gave her family an envelope filled with money, knowing that Ms. Fraser’s husband was out of a job.
Ms. King’s husband died in 2005, Ms. Fraser said, and she had lived with one of her three sons and his children before they recently moved to Ohio.
“I cannot believe I am typing this,” that son, Wes King, wrote on Facebook on Thursday as he shared that the gunman had shot his mother in the chest.
Emergency responders attempted to use CPR on her to no avail, Mr. King wrote, and she died shortly after arriving at a hospital.
“I apologize for the graphic details, but this type of crime needs to stop being glossed over and sanitized,” her son wrote. “No one deserves this.”
Ms. King’s smile will never be forgotten, a neighbor, Aahil Shermohammed, said.
“She was always checking up on me for no reason,” he said, “and it was always nice when you’re having a bad day to have someone like that smile at you.”
Hospitals in the Memphis area are already crowded with Covid patients.
Regional One Health, a hospital in Memphis, had received nine patients injured in the shooting, according to a spokeswoman.Credit…Houston Cofield for The New York Times
Hospitals near a grocery store shooting in Collierville, Tenn., were already struggling to keep up with Covid-19 patients when those injured in the attack arrived in emergency rooms on Thursday.
National Guard troops had been stationed at medical centers to help cope with the influx of Covid-19 patients, and emergency medical providers had recently issued a dire warning to local officials about the strain on hospitals.
“Currently our system emergency departments are operating dangerously over capacity,” the medical providers wrote on Aug. 16. They added, “We may be unable to provide timely care to everyone and will have to make choices about delivering care to patients based on their probability of survival.”
They expressed particular concern about what could happen in the event of a disaster, given that “the city has no surge capacity to accommodate any additional disaster or unplanned events.”
An average of 96 percent of I.C.U. beds were occupied in Shelby County, Tenn., on Thursday, according to New York Times data. One nearby facility, St. Francis Hospital, reported that its I.C.U. was 100 percent full; another said its I.C.U. was 97 percent full. There were 15 I.C.U. beds available in the five counties in and around Memphis as of 5 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Shelby County Health Department.
Officials said at least a dozen people were hurt and one killed inside the Kroger store in Collierville, about 30 miles east of Memphis in Shelby County.
Regional One Health, a hospital in Memphis, had received nine patients injured in the shooting, according to a spokeswoman. She said the hospital had the capacity to accommodate those patients. Baptist Memorial Hospital in Collierville received one patient, who was discharged, and Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis received two, according to a spokeswoman.
Shelby County reported its highest number of Covid-19 cases during the pandemic last month. Those numbers have decreased slightly in recent weeks but remain high, with a seven-day average of 409 cases.
‘I have never seen so many police cars’: Eyewitnesses recount their escape.
Kroger Shooting employee outside the store in Collierville, Tenn., where 13 people were shot on Thursday.Credit…Houston Cofield for The New York Times
Brignetta Dickerson knew the popping sound she heard on Thursday inside the Kroger grocery store where she worked was a gunshot, as she yelled at customers to “Go! Go! Go!”
As they ran to the back of the store in Collierville, Tenn., a Memphis suburb, the sounds followed, Ms. Dickerson told Region 8 News, a television station in the area.
“I heard him come to the back,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap.’”
They watched, she said, as the gunman shot one of her co-workers in the head and a customer in the stomach. At least 13 people were injured, one fatally, in the shooting, and the police said the gunman had died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Glenda McDonald, who works in the store’s floral department, said she thought she saw the gunman fire at a bagger and some customers as she escaped the building.
The chaos continued outside of the store as authorities responded to 911 calls.
“I have never seen so many police cars, in one place, in my life,” Bruce Pates, 73, said.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Pates had entered a tire shop across the street from Kroger. By the time he came out two hours later, there was a flurry of activity outside.
He watched as fire trucks and ambulances left the scene, only to be replaced seconds later with others. Rows of police cars filed into the parking lot.
Manny Reis, 49, was driving to Kroger when he saw a fleet of police cars rushing to the store. He ended up near the back of the building and saw someone who was injured.
“Somebody was sitting down without their shirt on,” he said. “The Fire Department showed up and basically grabbed that person and carried that person away.”
Although Ms. Dickerson is safe, she said she still felt numb.
“I’m OK, I’m OK,” she said. “I’ve been through everything, but this right here took the cake.”
Other Kroger supermarkets have been scenes of recent shootings.
Outside the scene of a shooting at a Kroger grocery store in Collierville, Tenn., on Thursday.Credit…Houston Cofield for The New York Times
The shooting on Thursday in Collierville, Tenn., came six months after a man armed with a military-style semiautomatic rifle and a pistol opened fire in a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colo., killing 10 people, including a police officer. King Soopers is owned by Kroger.
No motive has been publicly explained for that attack.
In August, one person was killed and another person was injured in a shooting in the parking lot of Kroger in Sandy Springs, Ga., a northern suburb of Atlanta, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The newspaper said that shooting had been the result of a botched drug deal.
“No one in any part of Memphis or America should have to face violence at work or in their community,” Marc Perrone, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents Kroger employees, said in a statement on Thursday after the Collierville shooting. “And we, as a nation, must do more to prevent these acts of violence.”
