Police identify man they say opened fire at a Walmart near Dayton, Ohio, injuring 4 before fatally turning the gun on himself - Boston News, Weather, Sports

(CNN) — The man who walked into a Walmart in Ohio Monday night and shot four people before taking his own life has been identified by police as a 20-year-old Dayton resident.

Benjamin Charles Jones entered the store in Beavercreek, about 10 miles east of Dayton, around 8:35 p.m., said Capt. Chad Lindsey, acting Beavercreek Police Department chief, during a Tuesday news conference.

Witnesses saw Jones holding a rifle that police identified as a Hi-Point .45 caliber carbine long gun, which is a semi-automatic rifle, Lindsey said. He then walked through different parts of the store, appearing to shoot indiscriminately at patrons, he added.

“No shots were fired by any responding police officers,” the department said in a social media post .

The victims were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment, Capt. Scott Molnar said in a news briefing on Monday.

One man and three women were injured. Three are in stable condition and one remains in critical condition, Lindsey said on Tuesday. Police didn’t provide specifics about their conditions.

The gunshot injuries sustained by the victims appeared to be “largely random,” Lindsey said, and the wounds were “throughout all different parts of the body.”

Police did not release any additional information about the victims but noted details about their backgrounds or races are considered part of the ongoing investigation into a possible motive behind the attack.

It’s at least the second deadly shooting at the same store where, nearly 10 years ago, police shot and killed a Black man who was holding an air rifle he had found on a store shelf and was not in its packaging. The killing sparked outrage and calls for reform.

Police responded to the scene within three minutes of receiving the first 911 call about the shooter, Lindsey said on Tuesday when he broke down the agency’s response to the shooting and shared footage from a responding officer’s body-worn camera.

Roughly seven minutes after the first call, officers found the shooter on the ground toward the store’s front entrance with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, he said. Police secured and cleared the building less than an hour after arriving on scene, according to Lindsey.

Monday night’s violence adds to a long list of shootings that have turned commonplace events and settings across the country – retail stores , schools , bowling alleys and birthday parties – into crime scenes.

There have been at least 609 mass shootings in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive , which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter.

A gunman nearly a year ago killed six people at another Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia. Since then, thousands of people have been killed by gun violence in the US, according to the archive. Many simply found themselves in the wrong place, at the wrong time .

Walmart will offer emergency support to affected associates and set up an offsite resource center offering counseling, the company said in a statement.

“With details of Monday night’s shooting at our Beavercreek store still coming to light, we’re focused on providing our associates with the attention and support needed to cope with this tragedy,” the statement read.

No decision has been made on when the store will reopen, the company said.

The FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, were all investigating the shooting Monday night.

Students at nearby Wright State University shop at the store, they told CNN affiliate WKEF .

“It’s crazy thinking that we’re literally less than five minutes away where we live. They could have went to a campus and not a Walmart, and it could have been us,” Wright State University student Kailie Conley told WKEF.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Maria Sole Campinoti, Amanda Jackson, Lauren Mascarenhas and Nicki Brown contributed to this report.

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