Shooting at grocery store in Arkansas kills 3 and wounds 10, police say
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A shooter who opened fire Friday at a grocery store in Arkansas riddled the store and parked cars with bullets as bystanders ducked for cover indoors and in the parking lot, authorities said. Three people were killed and 10 others were wounded.
The injured included two law enforcement officers who exchanged fire with the shooter at the Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce, police said.
“It’s tragic. Our hearts are broken,” Col. Mike Hagar, who is director of Arkansas State Police and secretary of the state’s Department of Public Safety, told reporters Friday.
Neither the officers’ nor the suspected shooter’s injuries were life-threatening. The remaining injuries ranged from “not life-threatening to extremely critical,” Hagar said.
The suspect is in custody and being questioned by the FBI.
It was the latest mass shooting in the U.S. to have a grocery store as its backdrop. A white supremacist killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2022, a little more than a year after a shooting at a Boulder, Colo., supermarket left 10 people dead.
Police did not immediately say whether the shooting, which happened around 11:30 a.m., occurred inside or outside the store in Fordyce, a city of about 3,200 people roughly 65 miles south of Little Rock. Police did not identify the suspect or victims.
City Council Member Roderick Rogers said he called the Dallas County sheriff when employees at his restaurant near the store notified him of the shooting.
Rogers said that when he got to the scene, he saw people running for cover in every direction, including one who fled to a nearby hospital.
In a ruling that limits the 2nd Amendment, the justices vote 8 to 1 that dangerous people who have threatened a domestic partner can lose their right to possess a gun.
“People were just jumping into cars to get to safety,” Rogers said.
A video posted on social media showed at least one person lying in the parking lot. Another captured gunshots ringing out.
Amiya Doherty said she was in her mother’s car in the grocery store’s parking lot when she heard what she first thought were fireworks. When she saw a man holding a gun and firing, she said, she ducked out of his view.
“I held my sister’s hand and I told her I love her,” Doherty told Little Rock television station KATV.
Images taken by journalists at the scene showed a slew of bullet holes in the grocery store’s windows. In video, local and state agencies could be seen responding to the shooting, with at least one medical helicopter landing nearby.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she had been briefed on the shooting.
“I am thankful to law enforcement and first responders for their quick and heroic action to save lives,” Sanders posted on the social media platform X. “My prayers are with the victims and all those impacted by this.”
David Rodriguez, 58, had stopped at his local gas station in Fordyce to fill up his car when he heard what he initially thought were fireworks from a nearby vendor’s stand.
“We heard a few little pops,” he said. He then saw people running from the Mad Butcher grocery store into its parking lot, and one person lying on the ground. He began taking video with his phone, and the gunfire soon escalated.
“The police started to show up, and then there was massive gunfire and ambulances pulling up,” he said. “The bullets were just flying.”
DeMillo writes for the Associated Press.
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