CHESAPEAKE, VA – A shooting at a Walmart in Virginia on Tuesday night left seven people dead, including the gunman, police said.
Officers responding to a report of a shooting in Chesapeake found multiple victims as they swept through the store for about 40 minutes, Officer Leo Kasinski said at a news briefing. Rescuers were dispatched to assist the victims.
It was the second high-profile shooting in as many days. A man opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado Five people were killed and 17 wounded Saturday night. The shooting comes a year after the country was rocked by the deaths of 21 people when a gunman stormed an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Tuesday’s shooting also brought to mind another Walmart shooting in 2019, when a gunman who police said was targeting Mexicans opened fire inside an El Paso store, killing 22 people.
Police believe there was one shooter at the Virginia Walmart who is dead, Kasinski said. He could not say how the gunman died, but said he did not believe police had fired.
The shooting appeared to have stopped when police arrived at the store in Chesapeake, Virginia’s second-largest city, which is close to the seaside communities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
Mike Kafka, a spokesman for Sentara Healthcare, said in a text message that five patients from Walmart are being treated at Norfolk General Hospital. Their terms were not immediately available.
Walmart tweeted early Wednesday that it was “shocked by this tragic event.”
U.S. Sen. Mark Warner tweeted that he was “saddened by reports of yet another mass shooting, this time at a Walmart in Chesapeake.”
State Sen. Louise Lucas echoed Warner’s sentiments, tweeting that she was “absolutely devastated that the latest mass shooting in America happened at a Walmart in my neighborhood.”
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