6/23/24

By Aditi Jha

On Friday, there was a mass shooting at a grocery store, the Mad Butcher, in Fordyce Arkansas, a city south of Little Rock with a population of around 3,200. The suspect, 44-year-old Travis Eugene Posey, was armed with a pistol and shotgun. Secretary of Public Safety and Director of Arkansas State Police Mike Hagar said, "The suspect arrived at the Mad Butcher armed. We believe that most, if not all the rounds, fired by the suspect were from the shotgun." CNN reported that several shoppers and store workers hid in a freezer, waiting there until help arrived. Four people were killed and nine were injured. One of the four people killed was Callie Weems, a 23-year-old nurse who was shot while treating another victim. "Instead of fleeing the store, she stopped to render aid in one of the most selfless acts I've ever seen," Hagar said. Weems had a 10-month-old daughter, Ivy. Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted that she is "thankful to law enforcement and first responders for their quick and heroic action to save lives" and her "prayers are with the victims and all those impacted by this horrific incident." Posey was taken into custody around 6:26 p.m. Friday and was treated for non-life-threatening injuries from resisting arrest. After, he was transported to the Ouachita County Detention Center. He will be charged with four counts of capital murder and will be in court tomorrow. So far this year, there have been over 240 mass shootings in the U.S. (according to the nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive), which averages over one shooting daily. Yesterday, a shooting at a Kentucky nightclub killed one person and wounded seven, and just today, shootings in New York (in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Park in Rochester), Alabama (where over 600 shots were fired), Missouri (in which a 26-year-old was killed and others were left in critical conditions), and Ohio (injuring ten people including two teenagers) left 34 injured and at least one dead. Just this month, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision to overturn a federal ban on "bump stocks", accessories that allow a semiautomatic gun to fire with the speed of a machine gun. Biden called on Congress to "ban bump stocks, pass an assault weapon ban and take additional action to save lives - send me a bill and I will sign it immediately." 

That's the news for today. Stay safe!