The gunman who killed six people at a Chesapeake, Va., Walmart on Tuesday night legally purchased the firearm used in the tragedy hours earlier, officials said.
The city of Chesapeake announced on Friday that 31-year-old Andre Bing, who died of a self-inflicted wound before police arrived, legally purchased the 9mm handgun from a local store that morning. Bing had no criminal history.
City officials also released the text of a note they say was found on Bing’s phone, titled “Death note,” which discusses a number of people he thought betrayed him.
“My God forgive me for what I’m going to do,” the note read.
Officials redacted what appears to be names of specific individuals, but Bing allegedly wrote that the employees gave him “evil twisted grins” and mocked him.
“That’s why they suffer the same fate as me,” Bing wrote, according to officials.
Officials say Bing, who worked as an overnight shift lead at the Walmart since 2010, pulled out the handgun at about 10 p.m. on Tuesday night and proceeded to open fire inside a break room shortly before a scheduled employee meeting.
The tragedy is the latest in a series of mass shootings across the county.
Over the weekend, a gunman shot and killed five people at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo.
At the University of Virginia last week, three of the school’s football players died from being shot on a charter bus when returning to the university from a field trip.
President Biden on Thursday said he will again push Congress to ban assault-style weapons in the wake of the recent shootings.
“The idea … we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers,” Biden said while at a firehouse in Nantucket, Mass.
