Racist Grocery Store Shooter First Tried To Enter A Black Church, Police Say

While you were divert­ed by the rash of bombs sent to two pre­vi­ous Democratic pres­i­dents and their fam­i­lies, Vice President Joe Biden a mem­ber of Congress and oth­er promi­nent Trump crit­ics a white wing domes­tic ter­ror­ist walked into a Kroger in Kentucky and killed two African-Americans.

The main­stream media in the mean­time is heav­i­ly invest­ed in chas­ing the lat­est shiny object Trump throws them while this egre­gious inci­dent has gone on with­out any report­ing to date.

The Kroger where Gregory Bush killed two black people he didn’t know appears to have been his plan B, after a failed attempt to replicate Dylann Roof.

A 51-year-old man who killed two peo­ple at a Kentucky gro­cery and was sub­dued by a civil­ian who told him that “whites don’t shoot whites” had ear­li­er tried to enter a church with a pre­dom­i­nant­ly black con­gre­ga­tion, police con­firmed late Thursday.

Though chief of police Sam Rogers refused to “spec­u­late on motive at this time” dur­ing an after­noon news con­fer­ence in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, the killer’s failed attempt to enter the town’s First Baptist church was caught on video. Though the church wel­comes all com­ers, it “is head­ed by a black pas­tor and has a large African-American mem­ber­ship” accord­ing to the Associated Press.

Predominantly black con­gre­ga­tions of Baptists have been close­ly linked to strug­gles for social, legal, and eco­nom­ic equal­i­ty for African American peo­ple in the U.S. for cen­turies. As such, they have repeat­ed­ly become tar­gets for racist vio­lence — includ­ing the mas­sacre of nine parish­ioners at a famed A.M.E. church in Charleston, South Carolina, dur­ing a mid-week bible study meet­ing by white suprema­cist Dylann Roof in 2015.

Jeffersontown’s First Baptist holds reg­u­lar Wednesday night ser­vices, as well as week­ly bible study groups and choir prac­tices. The killer tried to enter the church in the mid-after­noon, how­ev­er, and would like­ly not have found it crowd­ed had he been able to gain entry.

Rogers’ pro­fes­sion­al reluc­tance to spec­u­late on what moti­vat­ed Gregory Bush to kill two peo­ple in the large Louisville sub­urb on Wednesday is under­stand­able, but one detail from the son of the man who con­front­ed and sub­dued Bush before police had arrived sheds sub­stan­tial light on the killer’s brainwaves.

He said, ‘Don’t shoot me, I won’t shoot you.’ He’s like, ‘Whites don’t kill whites,’” Steve Zinninger, son of the man who con­front­ed Bush out­side the store, told local WAVE‑3 News, explain­ing how his father had got­ten Bush to stop shoot­ing. Police seemed to con­tra­dict some details of Zinninger’s account, say­ing that the licensed firearm own­er who con­front­ed Bush had exchanged gun­fire with the man. They did not com­ment on the report­ed racial sol­i­dar­i­ty expressed between the two in the park­ing lot. 00:13 /​00:14SKIP AD

Both peo­ple Bush killed — a man inside the store, and a woman he pur­sued out of the store — were black.

Maurice Stallard, 69, was at the store buy­ing poster board for his grand­son, who the Courier-Journal reports was stand­ing next to him when he was killed. Friends described Stallard “as a warm, easy-going man who always greet­ed peo­ple with a hug” and “as a hard-work­ing fam­i­ly man,” the paper wrote.

Vickie Lee Jones, 67, lived a mile or so from the store and was in the park­ing lot when Bush shot and killed her. Family mem­bers told the Courier-Journal that Jones, a wid­ow since 2010, “had moved to Jeffersontown to be safe” and described her as “one of the sweet­est peo­ple you could know.”


Years before he attacked the two strangers — calm­ly hol­ster­ing his gun to walk out of the store between the two killings, accord­ing to local reports — Bush had showed signs of insta­bil­i­ty and vio­lence, fam­i­ly mem­bers told the Associated Press. He had attacked his elder­ly par­ents in 2009 and threat­ened his ex-wife dur­ing a court hear­ing the same year, the wire ser­vice report­ed.

Like Roof before him, Bush was brought in by police alive and unharmed. He has been charged with two counts of mur­der and sev­er­al less­er crimes relat­ed to dis­charg­ing a firearm in pub­lic.
https://​thinkprogress​.org/​r​a​c​i​s​t​-​s​h​o​o​t​e​r​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​c​h​u​r​c​h​-​k​e​n​t​u​c​k​y​-​4​4​d​1​c​b​5​9​3​a​75/