‘Heroic’ nurse killed in Arkansas mass shooting while helping gunshot victim

When shots were fired outside the grocery store in the small Arkansas town on Friday morning, June 21, a nurse rushed to help one of the casualties.

“Instead of fleeing from obvious danger,” 23-year-old Callie Weems was fatally shot as she attempted to render life-saving aid to another gunshot victim, Arkansas State Police Colonel Mike Hagar said at a press conference over the weekend.

“During the incident, we were able to observe the best and the worst sides of humanity,” Hagar said, praising the young woman for her “selfless actions” during the mass shooting.

Weems – the mother of a ten-month-old girl – was the third generation in her family to pursue a career as a nurse.

“She died doing what she always does: helping,” said her father Tommy Weems The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The suspect, Travis Eugene Posey, 44, had “no personal connection” to any of the 14 shooting victims, according to Hagar.

“It was just a completely arbitrary, senseless act,” he said.

The suspect is charged with four counts of capital murder, with additional charges pending, Arkansas State Police said in a news release Sunday, June 23. (His online arrest record lists capital murder and attempted capital murder.)

According to Arkansas State Police, the suspect allegedly opened fire at around 11:38 a.m. at the Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce, Arkansas.

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He exited his truck and “immediately began attacking victims in the parking lot,” Hagar said, adding, “Once inside, he indiscriminately shot at customers and employees,” whom Hagar described as “targets of opportunity.”

According to Hagar, police arrived on the scene less than three minutes after the first shot was fired and were able to arrest the suspect within less than five minutes.

According to police, 15 people were shot during this short period of time – 12 civilians, two police officers and the suspect.

Ellen Shrum, 81, Roy Sturgis, 50, and Shirley Taylor, 62, also succumbed to their injuries.

Of the surviving civilian victims – five women and three men aged between 20 and 65 – five are still in hospital as of Sunday, June 23, one of them in critical condition.

Fordyce police Officer James Johnson, 31, was treated for a gunshot wound and released from the hospital Saturday evening. Jacob Murry, 26 – of both the Fordyce Police Department and the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office – was also treated “for minor gunshot wounds,” police said in a series of news releases.

The suspect, who suffered non-life-threatening injuries in an exchange of gunfire with police, was treated and booked into the Ouachita County Detention Center at 6:26 p.m. Friday, according to police statements and his online booking record.

According to his booking record, no court date has been set and it was not immediately clear whether he had hired a defense attorney.

Weems, who enjoyed horse riding in her spare time, was nicknamed “Woodrow,” after the character of the same name in the western book and television series Lonely pigeonher father told The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

About an hour before shots were fired in the 3,200-person community of Fordyce in the U.S. state of Arkansas, Weems exchanged a text message with her mother, Helen Browning, the 53-year-old told the Associated Press in a telephone interview over the weekend.

In the text exchange, Weems excitedly told her mother that her young daughter had finally let her sleep in until 9 a.m. that morning.

“I bet you feel like a new mother,” her own mother replied in the conversation that would ultimately be her last.

Browning, who now plans to raise her 10-month-old granddaughter Ivy, told AP that the little girl will grow up “knowing that her mother loved her and that she was the sunshine in mommy’s eyes.”

Timber Harmon, a friend of Weems, has created a GoFundMe page to help Browning with her funeral costs and Ivy’s future expenses.

Harmon called the young nurse “a phenomenal mother” and “a hero,” adding on the campaign page: “She died trying to save someone else’s life. What a special friend we all had!”