Walmart manager kills 6 in Va. store
6 others wounded as gunfire breaks out just before meeting
CHESAPEAKE, Va. — A Walmart manager pulled out a handgun before a routine employee meeting and began firing wildly around the break room of a Virginia store, killing six people in the nation’s second high-profile mass shooting in four days, police and witnesses said Wednesday.
The gunman, who police believe shot himself, was dead when officers arrived. Police said they were trying to determine the motive for the shooting, and one employee described watching “bodies drop” as the assailant fired haphazardly.
“He was just shooting all throughout the room. It didn’t matter who he hit. He didn’t say anything,” said Briana Tyler, a Walmart employee.
Six people were wounded in the shooting, which happened just after 10 p.m. Tuesday, when the store was busy with people stocking up ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Police said they believe about 50 people were in the store at the time. It was not clear whether customers were among the victims.
The gunman was identified as Andre Bing, 31, an overnight team leader who had been a Walmart employee since 2010. Police said he had one handgun and several magazines of ammunition.
Tyler said the overnight stocking team of 15 to 20 people had just gathered in the break room to go over the morning plan. She said the meeting was about to start, and one team leader said: “All right guys, we have a light night ahead of us.”
Then Bing turned around
and opened fire on the staff.
At first, Tyler doubted whether the shooting was real, thinking that it was an active shooter drill.
“It was all happening so fast,” she said, adding: “It is by the grace of God that a bullet missed me. I saw the smoke leaving the gun, and I literally watched bodies drop. It was crazy.”
Police said three of the dead, including Bing, were found in the break room. One of the slain victims was found near the front of the store. Three others were taken to hospitals where they died.
Tyler, who started working at Walmart two months ago and had worked with Bing just a night earlier, said she never had a negative encounter with him, but others told her he was “the manager to look out for.”
She said Bing had a
history of writing people up for no reason.
The attack was the second time in a little more than a week that Virginia has experienced a major shooting. Three University of Virginia football players were fatally shot on a charter bus as they returned to campus from a field trip Nov. 13. Two other students were wounded.
The assault at the Walmart came three days after a person opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing five people and wounding 17.
Tuesday night’s shooting also brought back memories of another attack at a Walmart in 2019, when a gunman opened fire at a store in El Paso, Texas, and killed 22 people.
A database run by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University that tracks every
mass killing in America going back to 2006 shows that the U.S. has now had 40 mass killings in 2022. That compares with 45 for all of 2019, the highest year in the database, which defines a mass killing as at least four people killed, not including the killer.
President Joe Biden tweeted that he and the first lady were grieving for the victims’ families. “We mourn for those who will have empty seats at their Thanksgiving table because of these tragic events — we must take greater action.”
Kimberly Shupe, mother of Walmart employee Jalon Jones, told reporters her 24-year-old son was shot in the back. She said he was in good condition and talking Wednesday, after initially being placed on a ventilator.
Shupe said she learned of the shooting from a friend, who went to a family reunification center to find out Jones’ whereabouts.
“If he’s not answering his phone, he’s not answering text messages and there’s a shooting at his job, you just kind of put two and two together,” Shupe said. “It was shock at first, but ultimately, I just kept thinking, he’s going to be all right.”
Walmart said in a statement it’s working with law enforcement and “focused on doing everything we can to support our associates and their families.”
In the aftermath of the El Paso shooting, the company made a decision in September 2019 to discontinue sales of certain kinds of ammunition and asked that customers no longer openly carry firearms in stores.
It stopped selling handgun ammunition as well as short-barrel rifle ammunition, such as the .223-caliber or 5.56 mm round used in military-style weapons.
The company stopped selling handguns in the mid-1990s in every state but Alaska, where sales continued until 2019. The changes marked a complete exit from that business and allowed Walmart to focus on hunting rifles and related ammunition only.
Tyler’s grandfather, Richard Tate, said he dropped his granddaughter off for her 10 p.m. shift, then parked the car and went in to buy some dish soap. When he first heard the shots, he thought it could be balloons popping. But he soon saw other customers and employees fleeing, and he ran too.
Tate reached his car and called his granddaughter.
“I could tell that she was upset,” he said. “But I could also tell that she was alive.”