The Georgia grocery store where a cashier was shot to death for asking a customer to put on a mask has become a makeshift memorial one day after the senseless shooting.
Big Bear Supermarket in DeKalb was closed Tuesday but mourners gathered and dropped flowers in memory of 41-year-old Laquitta Willis, who cops said was gunned down by a man she had asked to mask up.
Off-duty deputy Danny Jordan, 54, was also shot by irate customer Victor Tucker, Jr. — but his life was likely saved by a bulletproof vest, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said.
Both Jordan and Tucker — who was shot in an exchange with Jordan — were still hospitalized Tuesday.
“I couldn’t sleep last night after I saw it on the news,” Dora Crawford, a former employee who was outside the store on Tuesday, told the Journal-Constitution.
“I felt like I needed to be close to someone. I just want to give somebody a hug.”
Mourners left pictures and lit candles, reports said — many just trying to make sense of the horrible scene that unfolded in the store Monday.
“She was always nice and kind and she was just trying to ask the guy to pull up his mask,” Honey Clark told TV station 11 Alive.
Matthew Bowers, a meat department worker, said the cashier always had helped him out in the store.
“Oh my gosh, she was such a sweetheart,” he told 11 Alive.
“I tend to forget my punch card a lot so she’d write me down, take a few minutes off saying, ‘Oh, you came in on time.”
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said an argument broke out Monday when Willis asked Tucker to put his mask on because of the COVID-19 pandemic but he refused.
He left briefly but came back in and shot Willis in the head, then exchanged fire with the off-duty deputy who was providing security in the store. Tucker was trying to crawl out of the store when he was arrested.
A second cashier was grazed by a bullet in the shootout, cops said.
The accused shooter is now facing murder and assault charges. He has a long rap sheet, with prior misdemeanor arrests that led to a psychiatric evaluation and court-mandated anger management classes.
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