LITTLE ROCK (AP) – A shooter who opened fire on Friday at a grocery store in Arkansas, United States left the store and parked cars riddled with bullet holes as bystanders ducked for cover both indoors and in the parking lot, killing three people and wounding 10 others, authorities said.
The wounded included two law enforcement officers who exchanged fire with and shot the suspect, state police said. The shooting occurred about 11.30am at the Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce, a city of about 3,200 people located 104 kilometres south of Little Rock.
“It’s tragic, our hearts are broken,” director Colonel Mike Hagar of the Arkansas State Police and public safety secretary, told reporters on Friday.
Police identified the suspect as 44-year-old Travis Eugene Posey of New Edinburg. He was taken to jail and charged with three counts of capital murder, while other charges are still pending. No court date had been set, according to the inmate roster.
A state police spokesperson did not know if Posey had an attorney, and the Ouachita County Sheriff’s Office said it had no information.
Neither the officers’ nor Posey’s injuries were life threatening. The remaining injuries ranged from “not life-threatening to extremely critical,” Hagar said.
It’s the latest mass shooting where a grocery store is its backdrop. A white supremacist in 2022 killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. That shooting came a little more than a year after one at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket, where 10 people were killed.
Police did not immediately say whether the shooting occurred inside or outside the store.
Police did not identify the victims and have not released a motive for the shooting.
