Travis Eugene Posey sentenced to life in prison for Arkansas grocery store shooting that killed 4 people, injured 11
An Arkansas man who killed four people and injured 11 others in a mass shooting at a grocery store last year was sentenced Monday to life in prison without parole.
A state judge sentenced Travis Eugene Posey to four life sentences for each count of capital murder. Posey was also sentenced to 220 years in prison for 11 counts of attempted capital murder.
Posey pleaded guilty last month to four counts of capital murder and 11 counts of attempted capital murder, one of his attorneys confirmed to CBS News, for the shooting that occurred last summer at the Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce, a city of about 3,200 people located 65 miles south of Little Rock.
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Judge Spencer Singleton handed down the sentence after testimony from the victims’ family members during a hearing in Fordyce.
“You don’t deserve to be part of our story,” Hanna Sturgis said during the hearing, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. Sturgis’ father, Roy Sturgis, was killed during the shooting.
Posey, who did not speak during Monday’s hearing, has been held without bond since the shooting and previously pleaded not guilty to the same charges.
Prosecutors and police have not publicly identified any motive for Posey, who was shot and injured by officers who exchanged fire with him. Police have said he did not appear to have a personal connection to any of the victims.
The four people killed were identified as Shirley Taylor, 62, Callie Weems, 23, Roy Sturgis, 50, and Ellen Shrum, 81.
During the midday shooting, Posey carried a 12-gauge shotgun, a pistol and a bandolier with dozens of extra shotgun rounds, authorities said. He fired most, if not all, of the rounds using the shotgun, opening fire at people in the parking lot before entering the store and firing “indiscriminately” at customers and employees, police said. Multiple victims were found inside the store and in the parking lot, police said.
Colin Murphey / AP 
Posey lived in New Edinburg, a small town of about 150 people located southeast of Fordyce.
One of the surviving victims filed a civil lawsuit last year against Posey, CBS affiliate KTHV reported, seeking damages for medical care and loss of income following the shooting. Attorneys for the woman have requested that a judge enter a default judgment against Posey, as he has not responded to the complaint. A judge has not ruled on that request.
The shooting temporarily closed the only grocery store in Fordyce, prompting food distribution sites to be set up around the community. The Mad Butcher reopened 11 days after the shooting.
The Arkansas shooting was among similar incidents at a grocery store in recent years. A white supremacist in 2022 killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. That shooting came a little more than a year after one at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket, where 10 people were killed.
