Arkansas nurse was treating mass shooting victim when she was killed herself | The Mighty 790 KFGO

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – One of the four people killed in a mass shooting at an Arkansas grocery store was a 23-year-old nurse who was shot while treating another victim, police said on Sunday.

“Instead of fleeing the store, she stopped to render aid – one of the most selfless acts I have ever seen,” Colonel Mike Hagar, director of the Arkansas State Police, said of nurse Callie Weems.

The gunman opened fire with a shotgun on the Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce, a town of 3,200 residents about 110 kilometers south of Little Rock, shortly before noon on Friday, killing four people and injuring nine.

The suspected shooter, 44-year-old Travis Eugene Posey, was also injured in a shootout with police. He is charged with four counts of capital assault, authorities said.

Weems, who comes from a three-generation family of nurses, loved horseback riding and was nicknamed “Woodrow,” after the character Woodrow Call from the book and television series “Lonesome Dove,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported, citing an interview with her father, Tommy Weems.

“She died doing what she always does: helping,” Weems said.

Investigators have not yet determined a motive for the crime, which Hagar described as a “completely arbitrary and senseless act.”

He said the gunman fired indiscriminately, first in the parking lot and then inside the store. He was armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and a pistol and fired mostly buckshot.

“During the incident, we saw the best and the worst of humanity,” Hagar said, praising the six police officers who intervened and stood between the shooter and the civilians.

Two of the injured were police officers, police said.

In addition to Weems, the fatalities were identified as 62-year-old Shirley Taylor, 50-year-old Roy Sturgis and 81-year-old Ellen Shrum.

The surviving victims are between 20 and 65 years old.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Aurora Ellis)