Callie Weems, the youngest person killed in a mass shooting at a grocery store in Arkansas on Friday, died a hero, police and family members say. Arkansas State Police Director Mike Hagar said Sunday that Callie Weems, a 23-year-old nurse, was treating a gunshot victim when she was shot. "Instead of fleeing the store, she stopped to render aid in one of the most selfless acts I've ever seen," he said, per CBS News. Weems' stepfather, Bruce Grice, tells KARK that she ran into the Mad Butcher store in Fordyce after the shooting began.
Weem worked at the Dallas County Medical Center, near the supermarket. Her mother, Helen Browning, says Weems was loving her role as a new mom. "We have got a beautiful, beautiful 10-month-old that we are going to raise, and she is going to know her mother was a hero," she tells KARK. She tells the New York Times that her daughter died "doing what she loved." She says her daughter "has probably taken care of every officer that was there or their child" in the close-knit small town 65 miles south of Little Rock.
The three other victims were Shirley Taylor, 62; Roy Sturgis, 50; and Ellen Shrum, 81. Police say 10 other people were wounded in the shooting, including two law enforcement officers. The suspected shooter, 44-year-old Travis Eugene Posey, was also wounded before he was taken into custody. Hagar said Sunday that no motive has been identified. He described the shooting as a "completely random, senseless act"—and as "the most cowardly, pathetic actions imaginable, as he was literally preying on defenseless victims, the majority of which were female," per the Times. (More Arkansas stories.)
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