Arkansas State Police release names of four people killed in grocery store shooting • Arkansas Advocate

Arkansas State Police have released the names of the four people who died in The shooting on Friday in Fordyce.

The shooting on Friday is classified as a mass murder, the Related Press defined as incidents that resulted in at least four fatalities. So far in 2024, there have been 18 mass murders in the United States.

Fourteen people – eleven civilians, two police officers and the suspect – were shot at the Mad Butcher, part of a regional grocery chain, around 11:30 a.m. Friday morning. The suspect is 44-year-old Travis Posey of New Edinburg in Cleveland County.

Posey fired “dozens of shots,” mostly buckshot, from a shotgun, first in the grocery store parking lot before entering the building and “firing indiscriminately,” ASP Director Col. Mike Hagar said at a news conference Sunday at the agency’s headquarters in Little Rock.

Police officers arrested Posey within five minutes of the first shots being fired, Hagar said. He called the shooting “a completely random, senseless act.”

Three dead and 11 injured in mass shooting at grocery store in southern Arkansas

The four civilians killed were:

• Shirley Taylor, 62
• Callie Weems, 23
• Roy Sturgis, 50
• Ellen Shrum, 81

Weems was a nurse and was killed while helping another victim, Hagar said.

Three of the remaining seven civilians were treated and released from Dallas County Medical Center on Friday, while four others remain hospitalized, including a woman in critical condition at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, ASP said in a news release Saturday.

Fordyce police officer James Johnson, 31, and Stuttgart police officer John Hudson, 24, survived their injuries, while Posey was treated for non-life-threatening injuries Friday and is being held at the Ouachita County Detention Center, the ASP news release said.

Police are investigating Posey’s motives but have not been able to establish any connection between him and the victims and his criminal history appears to be “very limited,” Hagar said.

Posey is accused of four counts of capital murder, with “additional charges” pending, the press release said. The death penalty is “on the table” as a possible punishment for a capital murder conviction, Hagar said.

“The suspect’s actions were the most cowardly and pathetic imaginable,” he said. “It appears he literally exploited defenseless victims, most of whom were female.”

In a post on X On Friday afternoon, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she was grateful for the “heroic response” of police and other first responders and said her prayers were with the victims.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety, Arkansas has the ninth highest rate of firearm deaths in the U.S. In an average year, 638 people die from firearms in Arkansas and another 1,247 people are injured.