NURSE'S SELFLESS ACT AS SHE WAS SHOT DOWN IN ARKANSAS GROCERY STORE

• READ MORE: How the senseless mass shooting unfolded 

An Arkansas nurse who was caught up in a grocery store mass shooting is being hailed a hero after it was revealed she had the opportunity to escape from the shooter, but instead stopped to render aid to another victim.

It was while 23-year-old Callie Weems was treating another person who had been hit, that she became a victim herself and was shot dead. 

Weems' response to help was instinctual. The young woman came from a family of three generations of nurses.

Panicked bystanders ducked and scrambled for cover amid a barrage of gunfire, but Weems stayed behind to help.

'Instead of fleeing from the obvious danger, Callie Weems began using her training as a nurse to render aid to a gunshot victim in one of the most selfless acts I've ever seen,' Colonel Mike Hagar, director of the Arkansas State police, said of the nurse, applauding her actions.

Weems was one of four people killed and nine wounded during the shooting shortly before midday on Friday at the Mad Butcher grocery in Fordyce, a town of 3,200 people about 70 miles south of Little Rock. 

'She died doing what she always does: Helping,' her father, Tommy Weems said.

'There's no instruction manual for this,' Tommy said to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. 'These are the first tears I've shed. There's anger and sorrow, hurt. It doesn't come in any order. Your world as you know it ends.'

Weems had been reveling in her new role as a mom in the months before the gunman took her life, looking after 10-month-old baby Ivy Mae.

'He took a very special person out of this world,' distraught dad, Tommy, added.

Weems' devastated mother, Helen Browning, said that she initially believed her daughter was safe, because she turned on her location tracker when she heard of the mass shooting and saw she was at the hospital. 

'I'm thinking, "She’s at work. She came in to help,"' Browning told Fox16. 

Weems had been marveling that her little girl had let her sleep in until 9am that morning.

"'I bet you feel like a new mom,´" Browning recalled texting back. It was the last conversation they had.

But she said her fears were raised when she couldn't get hold of her daughter, and said the tragic truth dawned on her when she raced to the scene with Weem's stepfather, Bruce Grice. 

'My best friend was standing right there and I said, "Kristie, tell me my baby’s OK." and she said, "I can’t,"' Browning said. 'And that’s when I just broke.''

The suspect gunman, identified as 44-year-old Travis Eugene Posey, was wounded in a shootout with police and will be charged with four counts of capital murder, officials said.

Investigators have yet to determine a motive for what Hagar called a 'completely random, senseless act.' 

Browning lamented the loss of Weems and revealed that she had also known Posey since he was a child. 

'I just want to know why Joey Posey woke up this morning and decided he needed to go ruin families' lives,' she asked. 

Browning said Posey went to school with her youngest sister, and she never would have thought he could do something so violent.

She plans to raise Ivy now.

'She will know that her mother loved her,' she said. 'And that she was the sunshine of momma's eyes.'

A GoFundMe has been set up to help raise funds for the baby and pay for funeral expenses. 

Cellphone footage captured Posey in the parking lot with a long gun, allegedly shooting into the Mad Butcher store and at police arriving on the scene. 

Hagar said the shooter began firing indiscriminately in the parking lot and then inside the store, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and a pistol and firing mostly buckshot.

Police said on Sunday that Posey's motive was still unclear, but he appeared to have no personal connection to any of the victims. 

'During the incident, we observed the very best and the very worst of humanity,' Hagar said, praising six responding police officers who placed themselves between the shooter and civilians.

Two of the wounded were officers, police said.

Hagar said the officers and deputies who responded to the scene knew the shooter and the victims, making the attack particularly difficult and personal.

Police said Posey, who was in custody at the Ouachita County Detention Center, will be charged with four counts of capital murder. 

Besides Weems, the fatal victims were identified as Shirley Taylor, 62, Roy Sturgis, 50, and Ellen Shrum, 81.

The surviving victims range in age from 20 to 65.

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2024-06-24T04:52:34Z dg43tfdfdgfd