US Business

A 31-year-old overnight manager at Walmart shot and killed six people at a store bustling with Thanksgiving holiday shoppers before turning the pistol on himself, authorities said Wednesday, in America’s second high-profile mass shooting in four days.

Four other people remained hospitalized in unknown condition following the Tuesday night rampage in Chesapeake, Virginia, police chief Mark Solesky said.

The gunman is believed to have died of a “self-inflicted gunshot wound,” Solesky told reporters, adding that the motive behind the country’s latest outburst of gun violence was not yet known.

City authorities identified the shooter as Chesapeake resident Andre Bing, saying he was armed with one handgun and multiple magazines. Walmart confirmed in a statement that Bing was an overnight team lead, employed with the company since 2010.

An employee named Briana Tyler — who survived the attack — earlier described scenes of terror as the store manager entered a staff break room, and opened fire. 

“He wasn’t aiming at anybody specifically,” Tyler told ABC’s “Good Morning America” program. “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.”

She said the gunman looked right at her and fired but missed by mere inches. “He didn’t say a word, he didn’t say anything at all,” Tyler said.

The assault came two days before the quintessential American family holiday Thursday and on the heels of a weekend gun attack at an LGBTQ club in Colorado that killed five people.

And fewer than 10 days before this shooting in Chesapeake, Virginia, three students at the University of Virginia who played on its football team were killed November 13 by a classmate after a field trip.

President Joe Biden called the attack senseless and said “there are now even more tables across the country that will have empty seats this Thanksgiving.”

– ‘Extremely crowded’ –

In the Walmart attack, emergency calls were first made just after 10:00 pm Tuesday (0300 GMT Wednesday) while the store was still open. Chesapeake is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) southeast of the US capital Washington.

Officers entered the store a few minutes later, Solesky said.

The shooter and two victims were found dead in the break room, while another body was found next to the front of the store, the city said. Three people taken to hospital with gunshot wounds later died.

The youngest of the victims was 16 years old, officials said.

Terri Brown, who was in the Walmart but left just before the shooting, said the store was packed with holiday shoppers.

“It was extremely crowded,” Brown told the local ABC affiliate 13NewsNow. “All of the checkouts were extremely busy. They had most registers open. There were long, long lines at the self-checkout.”

In the store parking lot on Wednesday, a makeshift memorial of flowers and small white electric candles sat against a tree beneath crime scene tape. White, blue and golden balloons tied to a tree blew in the wind. 

Susan Neal Matousek came by the memorial display to “pay my condolences,” she told AFP. 

“I couldn’t imagine losing someone right before Thanksgiving,” the 57-year-old retired teacher said. 

Walmart said in a statement Wednesday the company is cooperating with law enforcement’s investigation and is “focused on doing everything we can to support our associates and their families.”

Gun attacks in grocery stores in America have become increasingly common in recent years. A teenage gunman killed 10 people, most of them Black, at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York in May.

Last year a shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado also left 10 dead. And in a particularly gruesome attack in 2019, a young gunman killed 23 and wounded 26 as he stalked shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

An advocacy group called Guns Down America has reported that from January 1, 2020 to May 14 of this year there were 448 “gun incidents” and 137 deaths at 12 large national retailers.

So far in 2022, the Gun Violence Archive website has tracked more than 600 mass shootings in the United States — defined as an incident with four or more people shot or killed, not including the shooter. 

Tyler, the store employee, told ABC that the manager in question had a reputation as a difficult character.

“He was the manager to look out for because there was always something going on with him, just having an issue with someone,” she said. “I would’ve never thought he would do something like this.”

Two American babies born to a surrogate mother from eastern Ukraine and evacuated to Russia after the start of the war have been returned to their US parents, the private group behind the operation, Project Dynamo, said Wednesday.

The twins, a boy and a girl, were “rescued” Tuesday after the organization’s first mission on Russian territory, Project Dynamo said in a statement. 

The Tampa, Florida-based group was created by former military personnel in 2021 to help evacuate US and Afghan allies during the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The children were not kidnapped but evacuated to Estonia “contacts” in Russia, Peter D’Abrosca, a spokesman for the group, told AFP. 

The surrogate mother lived in the Donbas, an eastern region of Ukraine partially occupied by Russian forces. Fleeing the war, she first sought refuge in Crimea before reaching St. Petersburg, where she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, in early September, according to the release.

The babies were sent to an orphanage in the city and the parents, a couple from Texas who requested anonymity, had sought to get them back unsuccessfully. The parents then contacted the NGO and one of its cofounders, Bryan Stern, traveled to Estonia to set up the mission from the town of Narva, on the Russian border.

The release does not specify how the extraction of the babies occurred, stating only that “the mission took about a week to set up and was completed in one day.” 

Bryan Stern voiced his “deep appreciation to the US embassies in Moscow and Tallinn, without providing details to any assistance they may have offered.

Questioned about what help the US embassies offered, the spokesman for the NGO simply said they had “played a role.”

The US State Department also declined to provide clarification.

“We are aware of this information,” a spokesman said. “For privacy reasons, we will not comment further at this time.”

US citizenship is automatically granted to children of American couples born abroad to surrogate mothers or through in-vitro fertilization, provided that at least one parent has biological ties to the baby.

A majority of US Federal Reserve policymakers found that a slower pace of interest rate hikes would “likely soon be appropriate,” the central bank said Wednesday.

The Fed has embarked on an aggressive path to cool demand and bring down prices as inflation in the world’s biggest economy surged to the highest level in decades, raising the benchmark borrowing rate six times this year.

With inflation hovering around 7.7 percent, the latest policy meeting in early November produced a fourth consecutive three-quarter point interest rate hike, a major rise.

This brings the rate to a range between 3.75 and four percent, the highest since January 2008.

But “a substantial majority of participants judged that a slowing in the pace of increase would likely soon be appropriate,” according to minutes of the November meeting released Wednesday.

“A slower pace in these circumstances would better allow the committee to assess progress toward its goals of maximum employment and price stability,” the minutes said.

Participants of the meeting noted that it would take time for the full effects of policy to be realized, and a few found that easing the pace of interest rate hikes could lower risks of instability in the financial system.

In a sign of diverging opinions, some cautioned the impact of rate hikes could “exceed what was required” to bring down inflation.

– Few signs of abating –

But policymakers agreed at the meeting earlier this month that inflation was “unacceptably high” and well above the longer-run goal of two percent.

Annual consumer inflation came in at 7.7 percent in October, down from a blistering high 9.1 percent in June but still underscoring a heightened cost of living.

With surging consumer prices showing “little sign thus far of abating,” some officials found that policy might have to be tightened more than anticipated.

They maintained that a period of slower growth would help reduce inflationary pressures.

Despite signs of slowing activity as the Fed’s rate hikes trickled through the economy, officials saw that the labor market remained tight, with elevated wage growth.

New home sales posted a surprise increase last month as well, while demand for big-ticket American-made goods picked up more than expected, data released on Wednesday showed.

“Policy makers appear set to slow the pace of rate hikes,” said economist Ryan Sweet of Oxford Economics.

But he noted that the Fed’s path toward a soft landing is increasingly narrow, adding that the Fed’s staff economists see “the odds of a US recession in the next year as basically a coin flip.”

A growing number of voices, including some Fed officials, have advocated for smaller steps in the coming months.

Last week, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said signs of easing inflation pressures and a slowing US economy could allow the central bank to dial back its pace of rate hikes.

Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard also said last week that it would likely be “appropriate soon” for the Fed to slow the pace of rate increases, adding that it would take time for tightening so far to flow through to the economy.

The US Justice Department is seeking to question former vice president Mike Pence about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, media reports said Wednesday.

The New York Times and other outlets said that Pence was considering the request to appear as a witness in the department’s criminal investigation into the actions of the former president.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel last week to oversee the two federal criminal probes into Trump, who has announced a new White House run in 2024.

One investigation is focused on the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

The other is a probe into a cache of classified government documents seized in an FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in August.

The special counsel will determine whether the former president should face any charges, though the attorney general will have the ultimate say on whether charges should be filed.

The Times said the request for Pence’s testimony was made before the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith.

Pence’s testimony could help shed light on Trump’s bid to block the January 6, 2021 certification by Congress of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

Trump publicly pressured Pence, who presided over the session of Congress, not to certify the election results, but the vice president resisted his demands.

Pence has denounced Trump’s actions on January 6 as “reckless” but has declined to answer questions from a congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack.

But the Times said the former vice president was open to considering the Justice Department’s request for his testimony because it is a criminal investigation. He has not been formally subpoenaed.

Trump could try to block Pence’s testimony by citing executive privilege, as he has tried to do with other former officials who have been summoned for questioning in the probe.

Pence is believed to be considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 but has not yet announced his candidacy.

The Black Friday kickoff of the holiday shopping season is expected to bring especially deep discounts in 2022, but one challenge will be finding consumers confident enough to spend.

Grinding inflation in the world’s biggest economy in recent months has cast uncertainty over this year’s festive season, which kicks off the day after Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday.

A year ago, retailers faced product shortfalls in the wake of shipping backlogs and Covid-19-related factory closures. To avert a repeat, the industry front-loaded its holiday imports this year, leaving it vulnerable to oversupply at a time when consumers are cutting back.

“Supply shortages was yesterday’s problem,” said Neil Saunders, managing director for GlobalData Retail, a consultancy. “Today’s problem is having too much stuff.”

Saunders said retailers have made progress in recent months in reducing excess inventories but that oversupply created banner conditions for bargain-hunters in many categories, including electronics, home improvement and apparel.

Juameelah Henderson always checks for sales, “but more so now,” she said while exiting an Old Navy store in New York with four bags of items.

The clothing chain’s prices were “pretty good,” she said. “If it’s not on sale, I really don’t need it.”

Higher costs for gasoline and household staples like meat and cereal are an economy-wide issue, but do not burden everyone equally.

“The lower incomes are definitely hit worst by the higher inflation,” said Claire Li, a senior analyst at Moody’s. “People have to spend on the essential items.” 

– Diminishing savings –

Leading forecasts from Deloitte and the National Retail Federation project a single-digit percentage increase, but it likely won’t exceed the inflation rate.

The consumer price index has been up about eight percent on an annual basis, which means that a similar size increase in holiday sales would equate with lower volumes.

US shoppers have remained resilient throughout the myriad stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, often spending more than expected, even when consumer sentiment surveys suggest they are in a gloomy mood.

Part of the reason has been the unusually robust state of savings, with many households banking government pandemic aid payments at a time of reduced consumption due to Covid-19 restrictions.

But that cushion is starting to whittle away. After hitting $2.5 trillion in excess savings in mid-2021, the benchmark fell to $1.7 trillion in the second quarter, according to Moody’s.

Consumers with incomes below $35,000 were affected the most, with their excess savings falling nearly 39 percent between the fourth quarter of 2021 and mid-2022, according to Moody’s.

Accompanying this drop has been a rise in credit card debt visible in Federal Reserve data and anecdotally described by chains that also report more purchases made with food stamps.

“We’re seeing continued pressure,” said Michael Witynski, chief executive of Dollar Tree, a discount retailer that has seen “shifts” in shoppers, “where they’re very consumable and needs-based focused to try and make that budget work and stretch it over the month.”

– Mixed picture –

Earnings reports from retailers in recent days have painted a mixed picture on consumer health.

Target stood on the downcast side of the ledger, pointing to a sharp decline in shopping activity in late October, potentially portending a weak holiday season.

The big-box chain expects a “very promotional” holiday season, said Chief Executive Brian Cornell.

“We’ve had a consumer who has been dealing with very stubborn inflation for quarter after quarter now,” Cornell said on a conference call with analysts. 

“They’re shopping very carefully on a budget, and I think they’re looking at discretionary categories and saying, ‘All right, if I’m going to buy, I’m looking for a great deal and a great value.'”

But Lowe’s, another big US chain specializing in home-improvement, offered a very different view, describing the same late-October period as “strong” and seeing no evidence of consumer deterioration.

“We are not seeing anything that feels or looks like a trade down or consumer pullback,” said Lowe’s Chief Executive Marvin Ellison.

Consumers like Charmaine Taylor, who checks airline websites frequently, are staying vigilant

Taylor thus far has been thwarted in her travel aspirations due to  exorbitant plane ticket prices. Taylor, who works in child care, isn’t sure how much she’ll be able to spend on family this year

“I’m trying to give them some little gifts,” Taylor said at a park in Harlem earlier this week. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to. Inflation is hitting pretty hard.”

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