Fourth victim dies one day after Arkansas grocery store shooting

Callie Weems was reveling in her new role as a mom just months before an Arkansas gunman shot her in a grocery store.

Her daughter Ivy, now 10 months old, was a constant source of entertainment and wonder, Weems' mother, Helen Browning, 53, said in a telephone interview Sunday as she shared memories of her girl. Weems, 23, was among four people fatally wounded and 11 others injured — including the suspected shooter — in Friday's shooting at the Mad Butcher store in Fordyce, Arkansas, according to authorities. Just an hour before, Weems marveled that her little girl had let her sleep until 9 a.m.

“I bet you feel like a new mom,” Browning recalled in response to a text message.

It was the last conversation they had before police say Travis Eugene Posey, 44, of New Edinburg, opened fire on the store, peppering cars with bullet holes as passersby Panicked people ducked and rushed for cover amid a barrage of gunfire. Weems, a nurse, died while helping another shooting victim, Arkansas State Police Director Mike Hagar said Sunday.

“Instead of fleeing the store, she stopped to help in one of the most selfless acts I have ever seen,” he said at a news conference.

In total, state police said 15 people were shot Friday, including 12 civilians, two law enforcement officers and Posey.

This is at least the third mass shooting at a U.S. grocery store in the past three years. In 2022, a white supremacist killed 10 black people in a Buffalo supermarket. This came just over a year after 10 people were shot and killed. supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

Police said Sunday that Posey's motive was still unclear, but that he did not appear to have any personal connection to any of the victims.

He carried a 12-gauge shotgun, a pistol and a bandolier with dozens of additional shotgun shells, authorities said. He fired most, if not all, of the rounds from the shotgun, opening fire on people in the parking lot before entering the store and shooting “indiscriminately” at customers and employees, Hagar said .

Fordyce police and Dallas County sheriff's deputies arrived a few minutes later, and Posey came out of the store and exchanged gunfire with them before shooting and arresting him.

For Browning, the tragedy was amplified by his ties to another victim, Roy Sturgis, 50, who was also shot and killed. She said Sturgis was part of her extended family, a logger and a loving father to her daughter.

“Roy was as country as cornbread,” she said. “He lived a simple life. He was a simple man.

The other victims who died were identified as Shirley Taylor, 62, and Ellen Shrum, 81.

Taylor took care of her husband, who suffered from diabetes, and crocheted, said her daughter, Angela Atchley. KTHV in Little Rock, Arkansas.

“She was the rock of our family,” Atchley said.

Fordyce, a town of about 3,200 people 65 miles (104 kilometers) south of Little Rock, was reeling from the shooting, city council member Roderick Rogers said Sunday.

He went to the grocery store Friday after people called for his help.

“It was like a war zone,” Rogers said, describing the shooter shooting “like crazy” in the parking lot.

Residents of this close-knit community are worried about the victims who are still in the hospital and even the possibility of another shooting, he said.

“A lot of people are scared,” he said. “They want to feel safe right now.”

Hagar said the officers and deputies who responded to the scene knew the shooter and the victims, making the attack particularly difficult and personal.

The injured are aged between 20 and 65, police said. Five of them were still hospitalized, including one woman in critical condition.

Police said Posey, who was in custody at the Ouachita County Detention Center, will be charged with four counts of capital murder.

A state police spokeswoman said Sunday that she believed Posey had an attorney, but she did not know the person's name.

Browning said Posey went to school with his younger sister and never thought he could do something so violent.

She plans to raise Ivy now.

“She will know that her mother loved her,” she said. “And that she was the sunshine in mom’s eyes.”