Seven people were killed at a Walmart in Virginia on Tuesday night in a shooting rampage that an employee claimed was carried out by a store manager who then turned the gun on himself.
“It was wild. It was a manager – one of the managers,” an employee in a Walmart uniform said in a Facebook livestream, explaining that he narrowly avoided being killed in the rampage.
Officers responded to the store less than an hour before closing around 10:12 p.m. and found the victims and evidence of a shooting, Chesapeake Police public information officer Leo Kosinski said.
Police earlier said there were multiple fatalities and injuries.
Five patients were being treated at Sentara General Hospital in nearby Norfolk, Virginia, a spokesperson for Sentara Healthcare told CNN affiliate WTKR. An update on their conditions was not immediately available.
“We’re just a couple hours past the initial incident, so everything is very fluid, very new right now,” Kosinski said earlier. A news conference was scheduled for 8 a.m. ET Wednesday, the city of Chesapeake said on Twitter.
Investigators believe the shooter was an employee or former employee of the store who opened fire on other employees in a break room, a law enforcement source tells CNN.
It is believed the shooter at some point turned the gun on himself, according to the source.
Kosinski said it’s not believed any law enforcement officers fired shots during the response.
The Washington, DC, field office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is assisting local police in the investigation, the bureau said on Twitter.
