A murder-suicide at a Georgia Walmart sent customers scurrying for the exits Wednesday night, unsure of the source of gunfire.
Hiram Police and medics arrived quickly on the scene and transported 26-year-old James Wyatt Nicholas Norton and 20-year-old Zoey Nicole Messenger to Wellstar Kennestone Hospital, but both were pronounced dead on arrival, WAGA reported.
“What it appears to be is a known-to-known shooting event where both parties knew each other,” Hiram Police Chief Mike Turner said. “This was not an active shooter. This was one person knew another person, there was some kind of former relationship.”
Turner said the shooting appeared to have been opportunistic.
“This is one of those events where it’s going to happen where the two people happen to meet,” he said. “We have no control over that. I mean literally if we would have had an officer standing over on the other side of Walmart, they could have not prevented this.”
Police said that Norton was an employee at the Walmart, WANF reported, although it’s not clear if he was working at the time of the incident. Police said he apparently approached Messenger in an aisle of the store and began a conversation with her and then pulled out a handgun and shot her and then himself.
Investigators said they’d had no calls about domestic violence situations involving them.
Turner said that no other customers were in the vicinity where the shooting took place.
“We have no eyewitnesses to the event itself,” Turner said, according to The Associated Press.
The gunshots, however, sent nearby customers scrambling.
“As soon as I heard the second shot, I ran straight for the exit,” shopper Devani Lopez told WAGA. “Because I heard the gunshot come from my left side, so I ran to the right exit. I ran straight for the car. I could see everyone running for their lives. Everyone was just so panicked and scared.”
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[Featured image: James Norton and Zoey Messenger/Facebook]
