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Suspect Arrested After Michigan Walmart Stabbing Leaves 11 Hurt
In a Walmart condemned to obscurity in Traverse City, Michigan (the very type of place that you’d least want to picture organizing cherry festivals as opposed to mayhem), there wasn’t this past Saturday afternoon anything that would have been on anyone’s weekend bingo card. A man, with a folding knife and clearly motivated by … who knows?, made an ordinary day of shopping into a living nightmare for 11 customers.
Bradford Gille, 42, wasn’t so foreign to fist fights, having been part of previous attack and drug offenses. But this time he went to unvisited extremes. He calmly entered the supermarket at 4:10 p.m., slowly strolling presumably as if he went there to make purchases, then at 4:43 p.m., he indiscriminately started stabbing around queue lines. Officials were at the crime scene by 4:46 p.m., all courtesy of prompt response by neighborhood cops.
Heroic Shoppers Bring Walmart Attacker to Justice
What made this episode strange were the lynch mob of consumer goons who assaulted Gille outside of the parking lot. Steven Carter, just a man fueling up his truck (assuming that his chief concern that day would be whether his bags were gonna fall off as he drove home), found himself a witness to a woman being stabbed in the neck. A lynch mob of five to six consumers—with one of them waving a gun as intimidation—clustered around Gille, yelling at him to drop the knife. But Gille, with misplaced bravery, reportedly fired back with, “I don’t care.” He stood by that position until someone took him down, thus concluding his mini-streak of terror.
Grand Traverse County Sheriff Michael Shea praised all involved with rapid response, saying, “When you look at call time to custody time, the individual was contained within one minute.” A minute. Sixty seconds. That’s as long as it’ll take to pay too much for gum at the checkout stand. A salute to human willpower and being at the right place at the right time.
Ages ranged from 29 to 84 years, and one of those injured was a Walmart employee. All are reported to recover, but two are still critical. During a press conference at Munson Medical Center on Sunday, Dr. Tom Schermerhorn made public details, with one patient being treated and then released.
Prosecutors Charge Walmart Attacker with Terrorism
Since there were no evident ties to terrorism to go along with such a senseless attack, prosecutors locally are charging with terrorism 11 assault charges. Prosecutor Noelle Moeggenberg clarified that this wasn’t merely an assault upon people but an attack that attempted to ferment fear within a whole community at-large. And by Tiffany DeFell’s recollection (she just so happened to be with her sister within a parking lot as chaos brewed around her), there was indeed fear that could be felt. “This is something that you see out of the movies,” she went on to say. “It’s not what you expect to see where you live.”
Walmart will collaborate with officials while they investigate, offer counseling programs to members of staff, pay associates while closed at the plant. The day that this location will open again is no one’s saying, but those who stay nearby this location are not quite exactly hastening back quite yet.
Traverse City Incident: How a Crisis United Strangers in Seconds
Traverse City, usually a place to go see for wineries, lighthouses, and America’s beloved Sleeping Bear Dunes, was dealing with this type of black news that never appears in travel posters. The 16,000-resident village is busy this week to repair its wounds and to make sense of this senseless act of crime.
If there is a lesson to be taken here (aside from “maybe don’t go to the supermarket unless you are emotionally prepared for anything”), it’s a poignant reminder just how quickly strangers will move together under circumstances of pandemonium. Whether by flailing customers fending off an attacker to a sheriff’s deputy who shows up within three minutes, there isn’t a doubt that no matter that violence is always inherently unknowable, there will always be a note of humanity to be extracted—albeit for just one minute.
