Arkansas shoppers hid in freezers as a shooting broke out around them, leaving three dead

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Frightened grocery shoppers at a supermarket in Fordyce, Arkansas, hid in freezers after gunfire occurred in a mass shooting on Friday, according to a report.

Shortly after 11:30 a.m., a gunman opened fire at the Mad Butcher supermarket in Fordyce, killing three people and wounding 11 others. The suspected shooter was identified as Travis Posey, 44, who is currently in custody.

Katrina Doherty, 39, was shopping with her 18-year-old daughter and four-year-old son when gunshots rang out in the supermarket. She squeezed into a freezer looking for a safe place to hide, CNN reported. By the time she and other shoppers entered the frigid haven, she had already heard nine or 10 shots.

“We ran in there really fast. We could still hear gunshots,” Doherty told CNN. “It was like slow motion. My daughter said, ‘Mommy, pinch me, this can’t be true.’ And I said, ‘Baby, it’s true.'”

Although she tried to call 911, Doherty said she had no reception. They braved the cold and stayed in the freezer in a “panic.”

Her son began to cry, she recalled: “My son almost froze to death. We tried to calm him down, but he said he wanted to go to his daddy.” Doherty said she “didn’t want the shooter to hear.”

It felt like they had been “in there forever,” the mother said, adding that in reality they had only been there for about 15 minutes: “I asked God to protect us all. I just prayed. The other woman prayed. She cried.”

The tragedy at Fordyce Supermarket underscored an alarming reality: mass shootings can happen anywhere.

“This is a small town and we personally know several people who were very close by when the shooting happened. It’s just so horrible what happened to people who were simply shopping,” Fordyce resident Charise Ellson wrote on Facebook.

Later Friday, Arkansas State Police announced that Posey was charged with three counts of felony assault, with additional charges pending. He was booked into the Ouachita County Jail at 6:30 p.m. Friday, records show. The motive for the shooting is still unknown.

So far, two of the victims have been identified. Callie Weems, a 23-year-old nurse with a 10-month-old baby, was fatally shot while shopping, her mother Helen Browning told Fox 16, adding that she had known Posey since he was a child. “I just want to know why Joey Posey woke up this morning and decided to ruin families’ lives,” Browning said.

“Fordyce was truly devastated today by a tragic and senseless act,” Cory McMahon, a nurse at Dallas County Medical Center, posted on Facebook. “Our very own Callie Weems, LPN, was taken from us and our hearts are broken and lost right now.”

Shirley Kay Taylor, 63, was also killed in the massacre, her daughter Angela Atchley told THV11. “She was such a GREAT woman, she didn’t deserve this,” Atchley wrote on Facebook.

The condition of the injured victims ranges from non-life-threatening to extremely critical, police said on Friday.

The Independent has sent an email to the State Police requesting further updates.

A former police officer was just around the corner when he heard shots and said: The Independent that he had “never experienced such shots before.”

According to data from the Gun Violence Archive, the supermarket shooting is the second mass shooting in the state this month alone.