RETAIL

The first retail shooting of the modern era took place in 1966 at a salon on a beauty school campus in Mesa, Arizona.

The shooter opened fire on a group of cosmetology students, and a customer and her children, killing five people, including a toddler.

The 1966 attack in Mesa was considered the first copycat mass shooting in the country. The perpetrator sought fame and appeared to emulate the massacre at the University of Texas, which took place three months earlier and received widespread media attention.

One in five mass shooters (22%) studied other mass shooters, according to The Violence Project, leading to a contagion effect in which one shooting can influence the next.

Mass shootings are defined by the Congressional Research Service as having four or more victims.

Shootings at retail establishments have taken place in every decade since the 1960s, but have increased in recent years.

More than half of the retail shootings between 1966 – February 2020 have occurred in the past 14 years, with venues, including a mall in Salt Lake City, Utah, a car wash in Saltlick Township, Pennsylvania, and a gas station in Detroit, Michigan.

The deadliest attack took place in 2019 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, near the border with Mexico. The shooter allegedly told police he was targeting Hispanics. Three Mexicans were among the 22 people killed in that attack. The shooter was charged with federal hate crimes.

 

 

Another prominent shooting took place outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona, in 2011. The perpetrator targeted a constituent meeting held in a supermarket parking lot attended by U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who suffered a major brain injury. Six people died, and 13 others were injured.

Jillian Peterson, Ph.D., and James Densley, Ph.D., built a new database of mass shooters that they hope will inform future research and policy decisions about how to effectively prevent and respond to mass shootings.

For their study, they used the Congressional Research Service’s definition of a mass shooting:

“a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms — not including the offender(s) — within one event, and at least some of the murders occurred in a public location or locations in close geographical proximity (e.g., a workplace, school, restaurant, or other public settings), and the murders are not attributable to any other underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance (armed robbery, criminal competition, insurance fraud, argument, or romantic triangle).”

Retail shootings (1966 – February 2020)

While there is no single profile of a mass shooter, there are several similar characteristics of shooters who commit crimes at a retail establishment.

According to The Violence Project database, a retail shooter tends to be a white man, around 30 years old, with a criminal record and violent history. He usually has no connection to the location and tends to use one legally owned handgun.

Sixty-nine percent of retail shooters had a history of mental illnesses and a third (34%) had a thought disorder, which includes schizophrenia and psychosis. A quarter had a mood disorder, which includes depression and bipolar disorder.

Seventy-six percent had a criminal record, 31% had employment troubles and 21% served in the military.

Retail shooters are more likely to be strangers to their victims than shooters at most other locations. While more than 60% of mass shooters knew at least some of their victims, only 31% of retail shooters knew some of their victims.

Half of retail shooters were white and 45% were minorities. The average age of retail shooters is 34. That is higher than the average age of shooters who carried out killings at schools (18) or colleges (28), but lower than the average age of workplace shooters (38.5).

 

RETAIL SHOOTING VICTIMS

 

◾ NOV. 12, 1966 Joyce Sellers (27 years old) • Debra Sellers (3) • Glenda Carter (18) • Mary Olsen (18) • Carol Farmer (19)  ◾ MAY 29, 1972 Melvin D. Harrison Jr. (23) • James G. Henry (31) • Jessie B. West (77) • Jackie Wharton (47) ◾ OCT. 16, 1981 Roger Click (28) • Rufus Hamilton (42) • Roger Hatfield (34) • Garvey Hamilton (28) • Michael Halbert (28) ◾ AUG. 20, 1982 Nelson Barrios (46) • Loni Jeffries (53) • Carl Lee (47) • Ernestine Moore (67) • Magnum Moore (78) • Martha Steelman (29) • Juan Tres Palacios (38) • Pedro Vasquez (43) ◾ APRIL 23, 1987 Emad Al-Tawakuly (18) • Nabil Al-Hameli (25) • Gerald Douglas Johnson (28) • Ronald Midgely Grogan (27) • Ruth Greene (67) • Lester Watson (52) ◾ SEPT. 22, 1988 Arthur Baker (34) • John Van Dyke (41) • Robert Quinn (26) • Irma C. Ruiz (40) ◾ JUNE 17, 1990 Louis Carl Bacon (39) • Doretta Drake (30) • Jewel Belote (50) • Julia White Burgess (42) • Janice David (40) • Sharon Louise Hall (45) • Denise Sapp Highfill (36) • Barbara Duckwall Holland (45) • Cynthia Perry (30) • Lee M. Simonton (33) • Drew Woods (38) ◾ OCT. 14, 1993 Rebecca Negrete (31) • Laxmi Patel (19) • Helen-Mary Spatz (36) • Charles Brad Tucker (37) ◾ DEC. 31, 1994 Deborah Hunter (37) • Jamie Hunter (39) • Steve Locklear (18) • Timothy Powell (20) • James Morrison (28) ◾ DEC. 19, 1995 Kwong Bae (41) • Maria Carrasquillo (38) • Rafael Gonzalez (12) • Ricardo Gonzalez (13) • Henry Lucero Inga (22) ◾ JUNE 3, 1999 Thomas Darnell (40) • Carlos “Chuck” Leos (41) • Dennis Troy Sargent (29) • Luci Tarantino (60) ◾ JAN. 9, 2001 Chong Chang (58) • Hyung Chang (54) • Kathy Chang (23) • Byong Sun Park (42) ◾ JULY 3, 2001 Juan Manuel Hernandez-Carrillo (44) • Melquiades Medrano-Velasquez (23) • Juan Carlos Medrano-Velasquez (22) • Angelica Toscano (19) ◾ FEB. 12, 2007 Teresa Ellis (29) • Brad Frantz (24) • Kirsten Hinckley (15) • Vanessa Quinn (29) • Jeffery Walker (52) ◾ DEC. 5, 2007 Beverly Flynn (47) • Gary Joy (56) • Janet Jorgensen (66) • John McDonald (65) • Gary Scharf (48) • Angella “Angie” Schuster (36) • Dianne Clavin Trent (53) • Maggie Webb (24) ◾ NOV. 1, 2009 Javier Manuel Martinez (21) • Juan Manuel Martinez (26) • Victor Alfonso Martinez-Jimenez (22) • Marcos Alvedo Aguilar (21) ◾ JAN. 8, 2011 Christina-Taylor Green (9) • Dorothy “Dot” Morris (76) • John Roll (63) • Phyllis Schneck (79) • Dorwan Stoddard (76) • Gabriel “Gabe” Zimmerman (30) ◾ OCT. 12, 2011 Victoria Buzzo (54) • David Caouette (64) • Randy Lee Fannin (62) • Michele Fast (47) • Michelle Marie Fournier (48) • Lucia Bernice Kondas (65) • Laura Lee Elody (46) • Christy Lynn Wilson (47) ◾ JULY 20, 2012 Jonathan Blunk (26) • Alexander Jonathan “A.J.” Boik (18) • Jesse Childress (29) • Gordon Cowden (51) • Jessica Ghawi (24) • John Thomas Larimer (27) • Matt McQuinn (27) • Micayla Medek (23) • Veronica Moser-Sullivan (6) • Alex Matthew Sullivan (27) • Alexander C. Teves (24) • Rebecca Ann Wingo (32) ◾ MARCH 13, 2013 Harry M. Montgomery (68) • Michael Ransear (57) • Michael S. Renshaw (51) • Thomas Stefka (62) ◾ SEPT. 23, 2016 Beatrice Dotson (95) • Wilton “Chuck” Eagan (61) • Belinda Sue Galde (64) • Sarai Lara (16) • Shayla Kathleen Martin (52) ◾ JAN. 6, 2017 Mary Louise Amzibel (69) • Terry Andres (62) • Michael Oehme (56) • Shirley Timmons (70) • Olga Weltering (84) ◾ MARCH 22, 2017 Karen Barclay (62) • Dianne Renaud-Look (67) • Sara Quirt Sann (43) • Jason Weiland (40) ◾ JAN. 28, 2018 Chelsie Lou Cline (25) • Seth Cline (21) • Courtney Sue Snyder (23) • William Scott Porterfield (27) ◾ FEB. 26, 2018 Cierra Bargaineer (24) • Raphael Hall (60) • Jamon D. Thomas (22) • Kristin Marie Thomas (21) ◾ JAN. 23, 2019 Debra Cook (54) • Marisol Lopez (55) • Jessica Montague (31) • Ana Piñon-Williams (38) • Cynthia Lee Watson (65) ◾ AUG. 3, 2019 Jordan Kae Anchondo (25) • Andre Pablo Anchondo (23) • Arturo Benavides (60) • Leonardo Campos Jr. (41) • Maribel Hernandez (56) • Juan de Dios Velázquez Chairez (77) • Angelina Silva Englisbee (86) • Alexander Gerhard Hoffmann Roth (66) • David Alvah Johnson (63) • Luis Alfonso Juarez (90) • Gloria Irma Márquez Juárez (61) • Ivan Filiberto Manzano (46) • Elsa Mendoza de la Mora Márquez (57) • Sara Esther Regalado Moriel (66) • Margie Reckard (63) • Javier Amir Rodriguez (15) • María Eugenia Legarreta Rothe (58) • Teresa Trinidad Sanchez Guerra (82) • Jorge Calvillo García (61) • Adolfo Cerros Hernández Aguascalientes (68) • Raul Flores (83) • Maria Flores (77) • Guillermo Garcia (36) ◾ DEC. 10, 2019 Leah Mindel Ferencz (33) • Leah Mindel Ferencz (33) • Douglas Miguel Rodriguez (49) • Douglas Miguel Rodriguez (49) • Moshe Deutsch (24) • Moshe Deutsch (24) • Joseph Seals (39) • Joseph Seals (39)

 

 

 

Source : https://projects.voanews.com/mass-shootings/english/locations/retail.html