Chesapeake Walmart shooting survivor: He was hunting

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

We, unfortunately, have a lot of mass shootings that come up in discussions these days. After all, we’ve seen three such shootings in just the last couple of weeks, with two this week alone. The latest was a shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia.

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In that shooting, it seems the killer was an employee–a manager–who decided to kill a number of his coworkers before taking his own life.

According to one survivor, this wasn’t someone just trying to kill as many people as possible, either. He apparently was looking to shoot specific people.

The shooter who killed six people at a Walmart in Virginia late Tuesday was targeting co-workers, “going hunting” and making sure they were dead, according to a witness.

Jessica Wilczewski said overnight team leader [killer’s name redacted] came into the break room before the late shift started and opened fire with a purpose, contradicting the account of another witness who said the gunman shot wildly.

“The way he was acting – he was going hunting,” Wilczewski told The Associated Press on Thursday. “The way he was looking at people’s faces and the way he did what he did, he was picking people out.”

Wilczewski, who had worked at the store only a few days, said the gunman let her go when he recognized her, but fired again at other employees he had already hit and were down.

“What I do know is that he made sure who he wanted dead, was dead,” she said. “He went back and shot dead bodies that were already dead. To make sure.”

On Wednesday, fellow Walmart worker Briana Tyler had said [the killer] “was just shooting all throughout the room. It didn’t matter who he hit.”

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However, if Wilczewski is being honest–and we can’t discount the possibility she is saying stuff for attention or something, though I don’t think it’s particularly likely–then it was clear the killer was targeting specific individuals.

Why the discrepancy if both parties are being honest, though?

Perception, most likely.

Witnesses often see the same event from wildly different perspectives, which shades how they actually interpret what they’ve seen.

The killer may have appeared to Tyler to not care who he hit, while he let Wilczewski go because he didn’t want to kill her specifically.

And, unfortunately, since the killer is dead, we can’t ask him unless someone busts out the Ouija board.

Now, I’m all for sparing the criminal justice system the effort of putting this twit on trial, but unfortunately, it robs us of an opportunity to learn just what happened and why. Sure, investigators can talk to everyone at the Walmart and others in Chesapeake, and maybe come up with a plausible motive.

But we won’t ever know just why this person opted for this degree of horror. We can’t ask him, and that’s the downside.

So, we have to go with eye-witness reports and hope that we can untangle the reality and maybe learn something so we can stop these in the future.

In the meantime, though, the AP reports that the killer had just purchased the firearm he used shortly before the attack and that he left a note outlining grievances.

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Authorities investigating the fatal shootings of six people at a Walmart said that the shooter bought the gun just hours before and left a note with grievances against coworkers on his phone.

Police in Chesapeake, Virginia, issued a news release on Friday that says they conducted a forensic analysis of Walmart supervisor Andre Bing’s phone and discovered what was labeled a “Death Note.” Police say he was the shooter and was found dead at the scene of the shooting late Tuesday of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

In the note released by police, Bing said coworkers harassed him and mocked him.

Police said he used a 9mm handgun legally purchased on Tuesday morning, hours before the shooting. The release said he had no criminal history.

Of course, I can’t help but wonder how, as a manager at the store, he didn’t do something about any alleged harassment.

This report surfaced a short while ago, which just raises a few more questions.

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