A little after eight thirty on a November night in 2023, a man walked through the front doors of a Walmart. He had a rifle held down at his side and a camouflage backpack over one shoulder. Nobody stopped him.
Just ahead of him two shoppers were sorting through holiday things on a shelf, and he lifted a hand and pointed a finger at them. Then he walked on.
A few seconds later a 911 operator picked up a call from inside the store. The caller got the word rifle out before the operator finished asking what was wrong. Another caller, a man who made it out the door with his fiancée, said he had thought it was a BB gun. He said the man with the rifle had looked right at him and said hi.
You are going to see how it happened, in order, from the first call to the last door the officers opened. You are going to see what separated the people who moved from the people who kept shopping.
THE SETUP
The tape is a compilation put together by EWU Bodycam from the store’s own cameras, the 911 recordings, officer bodycams and the detectives’ interviews afterward. It runs about thirteen minutes, and on the show I play it straight through, stopping seven times to talk about what you just saw. None of the footage shows anyone being hit. What it shows is the seconds before and the seconds after, and that is where the lesson lives.
Here is the frame for the whole thing, and it is the same frame the episode carries. Everyone in that store had the same few seconds to believe a rifle was a rifle, and the ones who moved first were the ones who believed it first.
That is not a line about courage. The man who ran was not braver than the people who kept pushing carts. He had the same eyes and the same few seconds. The difference was what he let himself believe, and how fast, and that is a thing you can decide before you ever walk through a door.
So this is not a piece about a shooter. He is the instrument. The subject is the habit of believing the first clear cue, and the handful of things the people who got out did right without anyone telling them. We walk it in the order it happened.
RIFLE AT HIS SIDE
Start at the door. He came in at walking pace, muzzle down, one hand on the rifle, the backpack on the other shoulder. He pointed a finger at two shoppers in the holiday aisle, and they went on sorting the shelf.
The first caller gave the store and the word rifle. The operator asked what he was wearing, and the caller was partway through describing his pants when the shooting started.
That call is the model: place, weapon, clothes, in that order.
A second caller had already made it outside. He said a man had walked in, that he had thought it was a BB gun, and that the man had looked at him and said hi. He still ran, and he was on the phone in the parking lot instead of on the floor inside.
A third caller was under a table in the Subway at the front of the store. The dispatcher kept that caller there with short, flat orders to stay put, not move and not make a sound. A table hides you from eyes and does nothing about a bullet, and when that is what you have, the calm voice on the line is what you obey.
SAME STORE, SAME FEW SECONDS
Now put two moments side by side, because the tape hands them to you minutes apart.
The first is the overhead camera. He is walking the aisles at the same speed as everyone else, rifle at his side, no hurry. Some shoppers see him and run. Others keep going, and the camera makes it plain that they never looked up.
There is nothing in his walk to trip the alarm you were born with, because that alarm listens for panic, and he brought none.
The second is a man who posted a video from the parking lot after he got out. A man with a rifle walked right past him and started shooting, and he ran. He did not film first and he did not wait for a second opinion.
Same store, same rifle, same few seconds to decide what you were looking at. One group kept pushing carts and one man went for the door, and the only difference the tape shows is which of them believed it first.
A man walked through a Walmart with a rifle at his side and people kept shopping.
Here is the conclusion the episode leaves you to reach on your own. Your instincts will not get you out of a store like that, because they are tuned for a man who runs and shouts, and this one strolled. The only thing that gets you moving in those seconds is a decision you made earlier about what a long gun in a shopper’s hand means.
His own brother and sister told the detectives they would not have believed it in a million years. The people closest to him had the same blind spot the shoppers had. You cannot count on noticing, you can only count on having decided.
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THE RUN, THE TABLE AND THE DOOR
The next stretch of tape is the cost of the decision, and it is honest about it.
A woman shopping with her mother heard the shots, believed them, and ran for the exit. A round hit her in the head on the way out. People held her still in the parking lot and kept talking to her. She did the right thing and still got hit.
The open ground between you and the door is where the danger sits, so you cross it low and behind something solid where you can.
Inside, officers working the center of the store found a woman in the drink section who had been shot seven times. She was still answering the officer when he found her. A hit is not the end of the fight, and that woman is the proof.
Two sisters had pushed what they could against the door and stayed put, and the next thing on the tape is an officer at that door asking to see hands. That door did what the Subway table could not. When the choice is a table or a door that closes, take the door, every time.
One of the wounded later told police the shooter had aimed at people who were running and not at the people who stood still. Take that as one account of one night, not a rule.
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SIX MINUTES, THEN IT WAS OVER
The first two officers arrived about six minutes after the shooting began. Their sirens reached him before they did. He ducked and scrambled toward the vision center, pushed past a barrier and tried to hide around a corner. Seconds after the officers came through the door, the shooter took his own life.
The FBI said, from two journals he kept, that the attack may have been at least partly inspired by racially motivated violent extremist ideology. He had bought the gun two days earlier without his family knowing. No manifesto was found.
Four people were shot in that store, and all four lived.
One officer says afterward that it went to real in about two seconds. Those are the same two seconds every shopper in that store got. The whole difference between the ones who ran and the ones who did not was what they had already decided to do with them.
Now the part you can use this week.
WHAT SHOPPERS DO WITH THIS
1. Believe the rifle the first time you see it. Decide tonight the one thing that makes you leave a store without a second look, and put a long gun in a shopper’s hand on that list. This comes from the second movement, the overhead camera and the man in the parking lot.
2. Know the second door before you need it. On your next trip, find the nearest exit that is not the front door, and walk the route in your head from the aisle you use most. The woman who ran for the exit in the third movement is why.
3. Stop waiting for the second shot to make it real. When you hear popping you cannot place, you are already moving toward a wall or an exit, and you sort out what it was from somewhere else. This is the hard no of the list. The BB gun caller in the first movement is why.
4. A hiding place is a door that locks, not a table. In the store you use most, name three rooms with a door you can lock or block, fitting rooms, restrooms, an office, and say them out loud. The fitting room door in the third movement is why.
5. Once you are hidden, go silent and stay put. Practice putting your phone on silent one-handed without looking at it, until you can do it in the dark. It takes five minutes tonight.
6. When the cops come in, hands up, empty, and do what they say. Tell your family tonight: hands open and high, nothing in them, no phone, and move where the officer points. Rehearse it once at the kitchen table.
7. Give 911 the place, the weapon and the clothes, in that order. Save the street address of the three stores you use most in your phone’s notes, so you can read it to a dispatcher without thinking. The first call in the first movement is why.
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BEFORE YOU GO
If this piece makes you look for the back door the next time you walk into a store, good. Everyone in that Walmart had the same few seconds to believe what they were looking at, and the ones who moved first were the ones who believed it first. Decide tonight what you move on, so you are not deciding it in the aisle with a cart in your hands.
Thank God all four of those people lived.
See it before you live it.
Godspeed y’all,
~ Chris
Source footage: EWU Bodycam HERE
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