Callie Weems was enjoying her new role as a mother in the months before a gunman in Arkansas fatally shot her at a grocery store.
Her daughter Ivy, now 10 months old, was always bringing joy and fascination, recalled Weems’ mother, Helen Browning, 53, in a phone interview on Sunday as she shared memories of her daughter.
Weems, 23, was one of four people killed and another 11 injured — including the alleged gunman — in the shooting at the Mad Butcher store in Fordyce, Arkansas, on Friday, according to authorities.
Just an hour earlier, Weems had been celebrating that her little girl had let her sleep until 9 a.m. that morning. “‘I bet you feel like a new mom,’” Browning remembered texting back.
It was their final conversation before police say 44-year-old Travis Eugene Posey of New Edinburg opened fire at the store, hitting cars with bullets as frightened bystanders hid and ran for safety amid a burst of gunfire.
Weems, who was a nurse, died while assisting another gunshot victim, said Arkansas State Police Director Mike Hagar on Sunday.
Bullet shots at the window (Via Franklin Myers/Getty Images)
“Instead of fleeing, she stopped to help, which was one of the most selfless acts I’ve ever seen,” he said at a news briefing.
State police reported that 15 people were shot on Friday, including 12 civilians, two law enforcement officers, and Posey.
This was at least the third mass shooting at a U.S. grocery store in the past three years. In 2022, a white supremacist killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. That occurred a little over a year after 10 people were fatally shot at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.
Authorities mentioned on Sunday that Posey’s motive was still unclear, but he did not seem to have any personal connection to any of the victims.
He was carrying a 12-gauge shotgun, a pistol, and a bandolier with dozens of extra shotgun rounds. He fired most, if not all, of the rounds from the shotgun, shooting at people in the parking lot before entering the store and shooting “indiscriminately” at customers and employees, Hagar said.
