A man strapped with “tactical weapons,” sporting body armor and carrying 100 rounds of ammunition has been arrested at a Missouri Walmart just days after another heavily-armed man killed 22 people at a Walmart in Texas.
Strapped with body armor and carrying “tactical weapons,” the white 20-something man dressed in camouflage fatigues entered a Springfield, Missouri Walmart and filmed himself pushing a shopping cart through the store as other shoppers fled in terror on Thursday.
An off-duty firefighter held the heavily-armed man at gunpoint when he stepped outside after the store manager pulled the fire alarm to encourage shoppers to escape. The firefighter held him until Springfield Police arrived.
“His intent was not to cause peace or comfort…He’s lucky he’s alive still, to be honest,” Springfield Police Lieutenant Mike Lucas told local media, confirming that the man’s weapons were loaded and that he was carrying over 100 rounds of ammunition.
The man's ill-conceived stunt, while technically legal in the open-carry state of Missouri, was almost guaranteed to inspire fear, coming less than a week after Patrick Crusius shot up a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, leaving 22 dead and injuring dozens more.
But he isn’t even the first armed man to terrorize a Walmart since the massacre. A Florida man reportedly entered a Walmart on Wednesday and asked a clerk “for anything that would kill 200 people,” triggering an evacuation, while a Washington Walmart was also evacuated after a man with a gun reportedly walked in and threatened to start shooting people. A man was shot dead in the parking lot of a California Walmart that morning, while the previous day police were called to a Louisiana Walmart after two customers pulled guns on each other during an argument in the customer service line.
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