CHESAPEAKE, Va. -- Thanksgiving marks the second full day of the investigation into a mass shooting at the Chesapeake Walmart that left six families missing a loved one for the holiday.
Six crosses brought over Thursday by workers with Hickory Towing and owner Matt Cilento now stand next to a growing memorial right outside the superstore.
“You never expect something like this to happen this close to home," Cilento said.
Each cross represents a Walmart employee fatally shot inside the store by a manager Tuesday night.
“Everybody in the City of Chesapeake is here to support them," Cilento said. "You know, it's not just their family and friends…. this affects everybody within the community.”
That includes the first responders. Cilento, a former Chesapeake police officer, said you never shake something like this.
“I know some of these people personally, they’re not sleeping at night,” Cilento said.
Dozens of other people visited the site on Thanksgiving to pay respects by bringing flowers, balloons and their prayers.
“I feel sad,” Lee Israel said. “What happened is… it's a tragedy, man — and people got to stay prayed up.”
It is not lost upon Israel that the families of Lorenzo Gamble, 43, Brian Pendleton, 38, Kellie Pyle, 52, Randall Blevins, 70, Tyneka Johnson, 22 and Fernando Chavez, 16, who was identified by family members Thursday, are missing their loved ones at the dinner table this Thanksgiving.
“It’s so sad the victims can’t be with their families,” he said.
Dr. Ogu Emejuru is grateful his two friends who were inside Walmart at the time of the shooting are OK.
“It was shocking,” he said. “I was worried.”
One of them is a store employee who escaped, he said.
“At first, one friend said he didn't know what was happening," Emejuru said. "He thought something fell down in the store, but once he realized that it was a gunshot, he ran out.”
One man who came to see the scene said he was frustrated at how common gun violence seems to be.
“This is just a total shame," he said. “We've normalized this to a point where it seems that we're numb as a society.”
That man believes elected leaders have the power to make a change, but he said they let politics get in the way.
“We're a democracy,” he said. “We're the leaders of the free world. Why can't we come together?”
On this Thanksgiving, we are extra thankful for our community and we are thinking of every victim of the Walmart shooting and their family members. There are still two people injured in the hospital, one in critical condition and the other in fair/improving condition. (1/3)
— City of Chesapeake (@AboutChesapeake) November 24, 2022
Officials said Thursday evening that two people injured in the shooting remain hospitalized. One of them remains in critical condition while the other is "fair/improving" condition.
Chesapeake will hold a Monday at 6 p.m. at City Park so "we can honor the victims and grieve together."
The store will be closed for several days while detectives process the crime scene. Authorities said their investigation will likely take much longer.
While there is still limited information pertaining to a possible motive, officials said they expect to release additional information available Friday.
Walmart manager 'was just shooting all throughout the room,' woman says
A Walmart manager pulled out a handgun before a routine employee meeting and began firing wildly around the break room of a Virginia store, killing six people in the nation’s second high-profile mass shooting in four days, police and witnesses said Wednesday.
The gunman was dead when officers arrived late Tuesday at the store in Chesapeake, Virginia's second-largest city. Authorities said he apparently shot himself. Police were trying to determine a motive. One employee described watching “bodies drop” as the assailant fired haphazardly, without saying a word.
“He was just shooting all throughout the room. It didn’t matter who he hit. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look at anybody in any specific type of way," said Briana Tyler, a Walmart employee.
Six people were wounded in the shooting, which happened just after 10 p.m. as shoppers were stocking up ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Police said they believe about 50 people were in the store at the time.
The gunman was identified as Andre Bing, 31, an overnight team leader who had been a Walmart employee since 2010. Police said he had one handgun and several magazines of ammunition.
Tyler said the overnight stocking team of 15 to 20 people had just gathered in the break room to go over the morning plan. She said the meeting was about to start, and one team leader said: “All right guys, we have a light night ahead of us." Then Bing turned around and opened fire on the staff.
At first, Tyler doubted the shooting was real, thinking that it was an active shooter drill.
“It was all happening so fast," she said, adding: "It is by the grace of God that a bullet missed me. I saw the smoke leaving the gun, and I literally watched bodies drop. It was crazy.”
Police said three of the dead, including Bing, were found in the break room. One of the slain victims was found near the front of the store. Three others were taken to hospitals where they died.
Tyler, who started working at Walmart two months ago and had worked with Bing just a night earlier, said she never had a negative encounter with him, but others told her he was “the manager to look out for.” She said Bing had a history of writing people up for no reason.
“He just liked to pick, honestly. I think he just looked for little things ... because he had the authority. That’s just the type of person that he was. That’s what a lot of people said about him,” she said.
The attack was the second time in a little more than a week that Virginia has experienced a major shooting. Three University of Virginia football players were fatally shot on a charter bus as they returned to campus from a field trip on Nov. 13. Two other students were wounded.
The assault at the Walmart came days after a person opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, killing five people and wounding 17. Last spring, the country was shaken by the deaths of 21 when a gunman stormed an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Tuesday night's shooting also brought back memories of another attack at a Walmart in 2019, when a gunman who targeted Mexicans opened fire at a store in El Paso, Texas, and killed 22 people.
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