The MAGAbomber is not the only violence the FBI is investigating this week. On Wednesday, near Louisville, KY, Gregory Alan Bush walked into a Kroger's supermarket and shot a man to death. Then he went out into the parking lot and shot a woman several times, and she also died on the scene. The FBI is involved because it's being investigated as a possible hate crime. Bush is white. His two victims, Maurice E. Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones, were both Black.
There is an unverified account of a man who was also armed, who allegedly confronted Bush in the store, in which Bush said something racist to him. The man's son spoke to a local TV station about it in the aftermath..
Chief Rogers said there were conflicting reports about a second armed bystander in the supermarket, and he could not confirm the account of a local man who spoke to reporters on Wednesday.
That man, Steve Zinninger, told a local TV station that his father had also confronted Mr. Bush with a firearm. Mr. Zinninger said the gunman told his father, “Whites don’t kill whites,” and moved on.
Minutes before Bush went to Kroger and killed two innocent Black people, he tried to gain access to a predominantly Black church nearby. The church's video surveillance cameras confirm this, as does a member of the church who was in the parking lot. From the NYT:
Billy Williams, the church administrator, said eight to 10 people were inside the church when Mr. Bush arrived after a midweek service. A church member in the parking lot grew alarmed when she saw him aggressively pulling on the historic church’s front doors. Mr. Bush drove away after less than 10 minutes.
“There were 70 people here at our weekly meeting service just an hour before he came by,” said Mr. Williams, who was among them. “I’m just thankful that all of our doors and security was in place.”
We very well may have had another Charleston tragedy on our hands. The two lives stolen are tragedy enough. Adding insult to the tragedy is the Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers. According to the AP reporting, Chief Rogers knows all of this, and still thinks "it’s too soon to say whether the shooting was racially motivated."
Too soon to say? Well, it's not too soon for the FBI, who we all know have had their hands quite full with other things this week.
