Three people died in a shooting outside a Walmart store in Oklahoma on Nov. 18 morning, law enforcement officials said, the third fatal shooting at the retailer in five months and the latest in a string of gun violence across the United States.
Two victims were shot inside a car and the third was in the parking lot outside the store in Duncan, Police Chief Danny Ford said.
Video of the scene showed heavy police presence around a car riddled with bullet holes in the Walmart parking lot in Duncan, Oklahoma.
A white sheet, covering what appeared to be a body, was laid next to it, with bloodstains visible on the ground. One woman and one man were found inside one car, with another dead man found outside the car, the Duncan Police Department said on Facebook.
The shooter was among the dead, the Duncan Banner newspaper reported citing police. Police also said that a handgun was found at the scene.
Authorities from multiple agencies including the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, the state highway patrol and the Stephens County sheriff’s office were investigating the scene.
Police are also looking for witnesses to the shooting, Ford said.
Aaron Helton, of Duncan, said he was parking outside the Walmart where he planned to buy groceries when he heard about nine gunshots.
“I arrived and there were three bodies,” Helton said.
No staff members were involved in the shooting and the store was not evacuated, Walmart spokeswoman LeMia Jenkins said in an email.
“This was an isolated incident in the parking lot and was not an active shooter situation,” Jenkins said.
Duncan is a town of roughly 22,000 people located about 80 miles south of Oklahoma City. The Walmart is in a commercial center that includes a sporting goods store and a dollar store along U.S. Highway 81, the main road that passes through Duncan heading south toward Texas.
The incident came the day after another shooting in Fresno, California, that saw at least four killed as people gathered in a backyard to watch a football game, with at least one shooter still unaccounted for.
California was also hit by a school shooting in Santa Clarita last week in which a 16-year-old boy shot and killed two classmates before turning the gun on himself, and a San Diego shooting on Saturday that saw a man kill his estranged wife and three of their young sons before killing himself.
In August, a man killed 22 people at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart and injured 26 others. He is accused of deliberately targeting Mexicans and has pleaded not guilty.
In July, a Walmart employee killed two co-workers and injured a police officer.
Walmart reassessed the security of its stores, adding third-party security or uniformed off-duty police officers at times, following the El Paso shooting and another at a Mississippi Walmart in which an employee shot and killed two colleagues.
In September, following the El Paso shooting, the company said it would no longer sell .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber ammunition that is often used the sort of rifles with large-capacity clips that have been a major factor in some of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings.
Walmart also stopped selling handgun ammunition and AR-15 and other military-style rifles.
The store also asked its customers to no longer openly carry weapons into their stores in states that allow the open carrying of firearms.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
