Ohio Walmart shooting bodycam footage released
The Beavercreek Police Department released bodycamera footage of their response to 20-year-old Benjamin Charles Jones' Monday night siege on an area Walmart. Jones reportedly shot four store patrons before taking his own life. (Beavercreek PD / TMX)
Police in Ohio have released body camera footage of their SWAT response to a mass shooting in a local Walmart — and their discovery of the shooter's lifeless body.
Benjamin Charles Jones of Dayton, 20, opened fire in the store around 8:30 p.m. on Monday, shooting several rounds indiscriminately with his Hi-Point .45-caliber Carbine Long Gun, injuring three women and one man, according to the Beavercreek Police Department.
Frantic bodycam footage shows responding officers enter the store with their guns drawn and slowly passing Christmas decorations in their search for the shooter.
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Benjamin Jones of Dayton, 20, reportedly shot four Walmart shoppers in Beavercreek Ohio before turning the gun on himself on Monday evening. (Beavercreek Police Department)
Ultimately, they found Jones dead of an "apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound" in the store's visitor's center.
"Got ‘em — shooter’s down," one officer can be heard saying into his radio on the footage.
Police were unable to determine how many times Jones fired his weapon before turning the gun on himself, but witness Alisha Ring said she heard about ten shots after he walked right by her:
"I was literally just shopping for Thanksgiving stuff, and this guy walked right past me with an assault rifle and started shooting," Ring said in a tearful Facebook Live video from the store's parking lot. "He shot like ten times, and I don't even know how much more after that. I just know that I'm so lucky to be alive right now, he literally walked right past me… How do people do stuff like this?"
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Ring said Jones, whom she described as a "tall, skinny white guy," started shooting in the store's freezer section — at that point, she ran toward the nearest exit.
Of Jones' four victims, three are in stable condition while one is still critical, a member of the Beavercreek Police Department told Fox News Digital. The department would not provide further comment at press time.
Since the shooting, the man's pickup truck has been towed from the store's parking lot, per the New York Post, and has been searched along with Jones' home.
Officers can be seen responding to a 911 call of an active shooter in a Beavercreek Walmart on Monday. (Beavercreek Police Department / BODY CAMS+ /TMX)
Now, per a Wednesday announcement from the department on X, the FBI's Cincinatti Field Office is seeking out more information regarding the 20-year-old.
Zrinka Dilber, assistant special agent in charge of the Cincinnati FBI Field Office, told WLWT the agency is looking into the suspect's history to try to find out a potential motive and whether Jones had a relationship with any of his victims.
A source told the New York Post that Jones had been hospitalized three times for 72-hour mental health evaluations — both voluntarily and involuntarily — over the past three years.
If this assertion is true, it is unclear how Jones obtained his weapon — under federal law, no one who has been held in a mental institution involuntarily can buy a firearm legally.
An officer can be heard saying "Got 'em - shooter's down," into his handheld radio when he and another officer encounter Jones' body in the store's visitor center (Beavercreek Police Department / BODY CAMS+ /TMX)
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"There were warning signs and red flags," the source said on Tuesday. "He talked about right-wing conspiracy theories, that the Holocaust didn't happen; he'd started talking about white supremacy stuff."
The source told the outlet that Jones was "not socialized" and attended an online Christian school. Jones allegedly hung a Nazi flag on the wall behind his bed, the source said.
The scene of the Ohio Walmart shooting (Associated Press)
The shooting was the second to take place at a Walmart this week. An Alaskan man and woman were shot dead as they walked into an Anchorage location.
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Walmart released a statement following the Monday shooting.
"Following Monday’s tragedy at our Beavercreek store, our focus has remained on supporting our associates’ well-being. While speaking with them about when to reopen and resume serving customers, their overwhelming feedback was to do so as soon as possible," a spokesperson said.
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