An innocent bystander was shot inside a Walmart when a brawl between two women at the store ended with one trying to shoot the other but missing her intended target.
Police rushed to the scene and officers delivered the wounded female shopper to paramedics as officers searched for the shooter and her intended victim who had both fled the scene.
Investigators are now trying to piece together what happened at the Walmart near 35th Avenue and Bethany Home Road in Phoenix, Arizona, on Sunday night, May 8.
Getty Images
Reports by local news channel ABC 15 said the shooter had fired “multiple times,” attributing the information to police sources.
Phoenix Police Department’s Sgt. Philip Krynsky told Fox 10: “The victim was extricated from the store to fire personnel. Officers conducted a search of the business and no other victims or suspects were located.”
He added that surveillance camera footage backed up accounts by witnesses that a physical fight had broken out between two women shortly before the shooting. One then pulled out a gun and fired at her rival. “The suspect appeared to have missed the intended target and struck the victim, who was unrelated to the altercation,” Krynsky said.
The victim suffered “non-life threatening injuries,” according to ABC 15. It is not clear whether she required hospital treatment.
Phoenix Police Department (PPD) is investigating. Newsweek has asked the PPD and representatives for Walmart for further information about the incident.
The shooting at the store comes just two months after a 16-year-old McDonald’s worker was shot dead inside the Phoenix restaurant’s bathroom during a fight on a weekday morning.
While in January, a 16-year-old Wendy’s employee was shot in the head in Phoenix during a disagreement with a customer over barbecue sauce. The teenager survived emergency surgery on his brain, but his family…