Ohio police given ‘pep talk’ on shooting scenarios ahead of Walmart encounter
This article is more than 11 years old
Sean Williams, who killed John Crawford in store, was among those shown presentation encouraging aggressive action
Ohio Walmart video reveals moments before shooting
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The police officer who shot dead a young black man in a Walmart store in Ohio as he held an unloaded BB rifle had less than two weeks earlier received what prosecutors called a “pep talk” on how to deal aggressively with suspected gunmen.
Sean Williams and his colleagues in Beavercreek, a suburb of Dayton, were shown a slideshow invoking their loved ones and the massacres at Sandy Hook, Columbine and Virginia Tech while being trained on 23-24 July on confronting “active shooter situations”.
“If not you, then who?” officers were asked by the presentation, alongside a photograph of young students being led out of Sandy Hook elementary school in December 2012. A caption reminded the trainees that 20 children and five adults were killed before police arrived.
Williams shot dead John Crawford III 12 days later, after a 911 caller repeatedly said that Crawford was pointing a gun at Walmart customers, including children. Surveillance footage released on Thursday showed Crawford passing shoppers with the air rifle at his side.
A set of 11 slides from a presentation given to officers in the July session was made public by special prosecutor Mark Piepmeier, who presented the slides and other evidence to a grand jury in Greene County, which on Wednesday declined to indict Williams on criminal charges.
Piepmeier signalled that the slides may have been important to the decision. “A question I have, and I think a jury would have, is how are the officers trained to deal with a situation like that,” he told reporters.
He described the presentation as “almost like a pep talk for police officers,” which informed them: “You have to go after these things, you can’t ignore them”. They were told to rid themselves of the mindset that “it’s a bad day to be a cop” when confronting people who “have used, are using or are threatening to use a weapon to inflict deadly force on others”.
“We should be saying ‘This is the day I took my oath, trained and prepared for my entire career,’” said one of the slides, which were prepared by the Ohio police officer training association and based on FBI protocol, according to Piepmeier.
Another slide told officers to consider that such an “active threat” was “in a building with the person I love the most” and then decide whether they would want police to wait outside for backup or “enter the building and find the threat as fast as possible”.
The police were taught to keep in mind that “the suspect wants a body count” and therefore officers should immediately engage a would-be gunman with “speed, surprise and aggressiveness” to prevent them from inflicting injuries or deaths.
Piepmeier explained that prior to 1999, police were trained to secure and evacuate the scene of a potential shooting and then wait for a Swat team. But this changed after the massacre at Columbine high school, in Colorado, in April that year. First, small groups of officers began entering shooting scenes and searching for the suspect.
“The FBI realised that wasn’t working, because in that five or 10 minutes they were waiting for people to arrive, people were dying,” he said. Since 2008, officers have been trained to enter the scene even if they arrive alone, said Piepmeier. They are told that the average incident involving a “terroristic threat or an active shooter” will last three to four minutes and “every 15 seconds, someone is going to be shot”.
Crawford was shot by Williams just under five minutes after the 911 call from Ronald Ritchie, who was standing 100ft away, connected with the dispatcher. Piepmeier said that one officer called back to confirm that Crawford was reported to be pointing the air rifle at people.
Captain Eric Grile, a spokesman for Beavercreek police, confirmed on Thursday that Williams was among the officers who attended the training. Piepmeier stressed that they were reminded that they were justified in using deadly force to defend himself or others “from what is reasonably believed to be an imminent threat of serious physical harm or death”.
“And that was, really, the question for this jury,” said the special prosecutor. “Looking at everything, was the officer reasonable in thinking that either himself or someone else was going to receive death or serious bodily harm”.
About 80 seconds before Crawford was shot dead by the police officer, Ritchie told the dispatcher: “He just pointed it at, like, two children.” The surveillance footage shows that he in fact stood still with the rifle at his side as the children and their mother browsed further down the aisle. After another 40 seconds later, the dispatcher asked Ritchie: “You said he pointed it at a couple of kids?” Ritchie replied: “Right”.
Referencing the Sandy Hook massacre, Piepmeier said: “Were the police facing such a situation here? No. Did they know that? No. They’re told ‘We’ve got a guy in here with a rifle, he’s holding the rifle, and he’s pointing it at people.’”
Virginia Walmart mass shooting: Survivors and witnesses speak out
“I looked up and my manager just opened the door and he just opened fire.”
ByMorgan Winsor, Jon Haworth, and Melissa Gaffney
2:03
Walmart gunman ‘looked directly at me,’ employee saysWalmart employee Briana Tyler said she was with her co-workers in the break room around 10 p.m. when the gunfire broke out.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
When Briana Tyler went to work on Tuesday night, what she thought would be a quiet shift quickly ended in bloodshed.
Tyler, an employee at the Walmart on Sam’s Circle in Chesapeake, Virginia, said she and her coworkers were gathered in the break room at the start of their shifts at around 10 p.m. local time, discussing which section of the store each employee would be working in that night.
“As soon as my team said, ‘All right, we have a light night tonight,’ I looked up and my manager just opened the door and he just opened fire,” Tyler recalled during an interview with ABC News on Wednesday. “He wasn’t aiming at anybody specifically. He just literally started shooting throughout the entire break room and I watched multiple people just drop down to the floor, whether they were trying to duck for cover or they were hit.”
Tyler said the alleged gunman — identified by authorities as 31-year-old Andre Bing of Chesapeake — looked “directly at” her and fired but “luckily missed” her head by “an inch or two.”
“He didn’t say a word, he didn’t say anything at all,” she noted. “I literally hadn’t even seen him before that point. He just came around the corner and started shooting. The first person that was in his eyesight, he shot him down and the next thing you know, he just started rigging throughout the entire break room but he did not say a word.”
MORE: Virginia Walmart mass shooting live updates
At least six people were killed and four others were injured before the suspect — wielding a pistol — shot himself dead, according to the Chesapeake Police Department.
Police received the initial 911 call at 10:12 p.m. local time and officers responded to the scene within two minutes. They entered the Walmart at 10:16 p.m. local time, where they found multiple gunshot victims as well as the suspect dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The scene was declared safe by 11:20 p.m. local time, according to police.
Law enforcement sources told ABC News that authorities are investigating whether the shooting was a case of workplace violence.
Tyler said she had heard from other employees when she first started working at the Walmart about two months ago that Bing “was the manager to look out for because there was always something going on with him, just having an issue with someone.”
“But I never expected it to get to this level of an issue, like I don’t know of anything that had happened recently,” she told ABC News. “He was the manager that everybody, you know, had something to say about. [But] I would’ve never thought he would do something like this.”
Jessie Wilczewski had only been working at the store for five days when the deadly shooting unfolded. She said she plays the events of that night over and over in her mind.
“When I sleep, like, it still plays, bits and pieces, so I can’t run away from it,” Wilczewski tearfully told ABC News during an interview on Thursday. “I had to sit there on the floor and, in front of me, watch my coworker have her last moments.”
Wilczewski, a mother to a 15-month-old boy, said Bing spared her life. She said she believes the attack was targeted and that she was let go because she had not worked there long.
“I looked at him after I got up from under the table and he saw it was me,” she recalled. “He had the gun pointed at me and he went like this and put the gun up. And then he just looked at me and said, ‘Jessie go home.'”
Another employee, Kevin Harper, said he was sitting in the break room after arriving early for his Tuesday night shift. But something didn’t feel right — so he left. Moments later, he said he heard around three or four muffled gunshots and ran into a clothes hanger to hide.
“I couldn’t tell you how long I hid in there,” Harper told ABC News during an interview on Wednesday. “Time just stopped at that moment.”
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Harper recalled running as fast as he could out of the store’s employee entrance. On his way out, he said he saw two people on the floor, including a woman covered in blood.
“I’m just praying for my Walmart family,” he added.
According to Harper, Bing was known for nitpicking the work of certain employees. Harper said he never had any problems with Bing but that others did and complained about him.
Chesapeake resident Terri Brown said she was shopping at the Walmart earlier that night before gunshots rang out.
“There are no words,” Brown told Hampton ABC affiliate WVEC on Tuesday night. “To see this unfold, to be a part of this, to know that this crime occurred so close to me and I was literally in that store. It’s terrifying.”
A Walmart spokesperson confirmed in a statement on Wednesday that Bing worked at the store in Chesapeake as an overnight team lead and had been an employee since 2010.
“We are shocked at this tragic event,” the spokesperson added. “We’re praying for those impacted, the community and our associates. We’re working closely with law enforcement, and we are focused on supporting our associates.”
During a press conference on Wednesday morning, Chesapeake Police Chief Mark Solesky described the shooting as “senseless violence.”
“This investigation is still ongoing, so there’s no clear motive at this time,” Solesky told reporters. “We’ll be processing that scene for days.”
Chesapeake Mayor Rick West, who tested positive for COVID-19 and could not attend Wednesday’s press conference, issued a statement saying he was “devastated by the senseless act of violence that took place late last night in our city.”
“My prayers are with all those affected — the victims, their family, their friends and their coworkers,” West said. “I am grateful for the quick actions taken by our first responders who rushed to the scene. Chesapeake is a tight-knit community and we are all shaken by this news. Together, we will support each other throughout this time. Please keep us in your prayers.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in a statement early Wednesday that he remains “in contact with law enforcement officials” and has “made available any resources as this investigation moves forward.”
“Our hearts break with the community of Chesapeake this morning,” Youngkin added. “Heinous acts of violence have no place in our communities.”
ABC News’ Luke Barr, Ike Ejiochi, Arthur Jones II, Aaron Katersky, Josh Margolin, Lauren Minore, Jay O’Brien, Beatrice Peterson and Pierre Thomas contributed to this report.
