Police: 1 dead, 12 hurt in store shooting; shooter is dead

A gunman killed one person and wounded at least a dozen more Thursday before apparently turning his weapon on himself at a Kroger market in a suburb of Memphis, police said.

Officials said the gunman is dead and described the injuries to victims as “very serious,” as ambulances swarmed the grocery store in a busy shopping area in the city of Collierville, Tenn. Collierville Police Chief Dale Lane said it broke his heart to deliver the news of what he called “the most horrific event” in city history.

“I’ve been involved in this for 34 years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lane said at a news conference.

The violence echoed other mass shootings in public spaces, especially a supermarket shooting in Boulder, Colo. that killed 10 people in March.

Lane said the call came in at 1:30 p.m. and officers were on the scene within four minutes. As they entered the building, he said officers saw multiple people who had been shot and people hiding throughout the store.

“We found people hiding in freezers and in locked offices. They were doing what they have been trained to do: run, hide, fight,” he said.

Lane said 12 victims were transported from the scene and one was a walk-up at a hospital. The victims are spread across multiple hospitals, he said.

He said it is not clear how many people were in the store at the time of the shooting, but there appear to have been numerous witnesses.

Lane said the suspected shooter’s vehicle is in the Kroger parking lot and law enforcement officers are waiting for equipment to arrive at the scene so they can safely check it. Dale declined to comment on what kind of weapon the shooter used.

Kroger did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the shooting.

Multiple agencies are working on the scene, Dale said, including officers from the FBI’S evidence response team. The Memphis Police Department said its officers were also there at 240 New Byhalia Road, helping Collierville police to secure the area.

“We hate that it happened, but this is one of the most resilient communities in America,” Dale said. “I watched guys that ran into the front of that building knowing that — historically, not in this case but historically — many of these shooters have very high-powered rifles. And not one of them hesitated going in that front door.”

JOE RONDONE/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL VIA AP Multiple agencies respond Thursday to the scene of a shooting at a Kroger’s grocery store in Collierville, Tenn., that left one person and the gunman dead and 12 others with “very serious” injuries.