Several people were killed and others injured in a shooting at a Walmart in Virginia Tuesday night, police said.
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) — A gunman opened fire at a Walmart in Virginia late Tuesday, leaving six people dead, police said, in the second high-profile mass killing in days. The attacker also died.
The Chesapeake store is now safe and will likely be closed for several days while the investigation is conducted, Officer Leo Kasinski said in the early hours of Wednesday.
The shooting happened three days after the man opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado, killing five people and injuring 17. Earlier this year, the country was shaken 21 people were killed when a gunman stormed an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Tuesday’s shooting also brought to mind another shooting at Walmart in 2019, when armed man the police say was aimed at Mexicans opened fire in a store in El Paso and killed 22 people.
Kasinski previously said he couldn’t say how the gunman died, but he doesn’t believe police 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 heartbroken that the latest mass shooting in America happened at a Walmart in my neighborhood.”
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