Police respond to the scene of a shooting on June 21 in Fordyce, Ark.The Associated Press
Three people were killed and 10 wounded, including two law enforcement officers, when a shooter opened fire Friday at a grocery store in Arkansas, police said.
The shooting occurred just after 11:30 a.m. at the Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce. Police shot the suspected shooter, who sustained injuries that were not life-threatening, Arkansas Department of Public Safety Director Mike Hagar said at a news conference Friday. Two officers were among those shot and neither have life-threatening injuries.
The remaining injuries ranged from “not life-threatening to extremely critical,” Hagar said.
“It’s tragic, our hearts are broken,” he said.
Police did not immediately say whether the shooting occurred inside or outside the store. Hagar said they expected to release more information later Friday evening.
Fordyce is a city of about 3,200 people located 65 miles (104 kilometres) south of Little Rock.
Video posted on social media showed at least one person lying in the parking lot, while another captured multiple gunshots ringing out.
Images from reporters on the scene showed a slew of bullet holes in the grocery store’s window. In video footage, local and state agencies could be seen responding to the scene, with at least one medical helicopter landing nearby.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she had been briefed on the shooting.
“I am thankful to law enforcement and first responders for their quick and heroic action to save lives,” Sanders posted on the social media platform X. “My prayers are with the victims and all those impacted by this.”
It’s the latest mass shooting to have a grocery store as its backdrop. A white supremacist in 2022 killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. That shooting came a little more than a year after one at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket, where 10 people were killed.
David Rodriguez, 58, had stopped at his local gas station in Fordyce to fill up his car when he heard what he thought were fireworks from a nearby vendor’s stand.
“We heard a few little pops,” he said.
He then saw people running from the Mad Butcher grocery store into the parking lot, and one person lying on the ground. He began recording video with his phone before the gunfire escalated.
“The police started to show up, and then there was massive gunfire and ambulances pulling up,” he said. “The bullets were just flying.”