Safeway customer, worker killed in Bend shooting as gunman dies of self-inflicted gunshot, police say

A 20-year-old gunman killed an elderly customer and a worker at a Safeway store who tried to intervene and then killed himself in a shooting Sunday night, police said Monday.

The employee, Donald Ray Surrett Jr., 66, of Bend, encountered the gunman at the back of the store in the produce section and tried to disarm him, police spokesperson Sheila Miller said.

She said Surrett “acted heroically” and “may very well have prevented further deaths.” She said the customer was 84-year-old Glenn Edward Bennett of Bend who was killed at the west entrance to the store in the popular Forum Shopping Center.

Police identified the gunman as Ethan Blair Miller of Bend and said he lived in the Fox Hollow apartments in back of the shopping center.

Officers had arrived at the scene within several minutes of getting 911 calls shortly after 7 p.m. Sunday and rushed into the store within a minute as shots were still going off, police said.

They found the gunman dead inside of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, with an AR-15-style rifle and shotgun nearby.

The shooter was believed to have entered the shopping center on foot from his apartment, walked through the Costco parking lot at the plaza and then to an entrance of the Safeway, where he shot his first victim, Police Chief Mike Krantz said.

He then shot the worker. At least two other people were wounded but expected to survive, police said.

Ethan Miller is listed as a member of the class of 2020 at Mountain View High School in Bend. Rage-filled screeds posted to public platforms and purported to be written by Miller in recent weeks warn of massacres and plans to take his own life.

The entries refer to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. They also refer to his trouble finding a girlfriend. He wrote that the planned shooting wasn’t an act of racial or ethnic hatred, but he went on to use multiple slurs.

Police said they were investigating the writings and found out about them after the shooting had occurred. He had no criminal history in the area, they said.

“We have no evidence of previous threats or prior knowledge of the shooter,” said Sheila Miller, the police spokesperson.

Investigators searched the gunman’s apartment and vehicle and found three Molotov cocktails and a sawed-off shotgun in the vehicle, she said. Ammunition and digital devices were found in his apartment, she said.

How he obtained the guns remains under investigation, she said, and police are working with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to find out.

The police chief said he couldn’t confirm if Miller worked at the Safeway or what connection he had to the store. Detectives are still seeking information about his motive, Krantz said.

It’s not clear how many people were inside the supermarket and how many were helped out by employees, he said. The gunman started shooting as he left his apartment and continued in the parking lots at the shopping center before he entered Safeway, police said.

On Sunday, Molly Taroli, 40, was shopping for dinner with her husband when the shooter starting “spraying shots,” she told The Bulletin newspaper.

Taroli said she took her own handgun from her purse, as employees yelled, “go, go, go!” as they tried to help people flee the store.

Josh Caba, another shopper in the store, told KTVZ he was with his four children when he heard multiple shots.

“I immediately turned to my children and said, ‘Run!’ People were screaming,” Caba told the news outlet. “It was a horrifying experience.”

The Safeway and immediate stores remained closed Monday. But just outside the yellow police tape adjacent to “East Safeway” as locals call it, Costco was open and its parking lot filled with cars and customers.

Gov. Kate Brown offered her condolences.

“I am asking all Oregonians to keep the victims of last night’s shooting in Bend and their families in your thoughts and in your hearts today,” she said in a statement. “Every Oregonian should be able to go to a grocery store without the fear of gun violence.”

Oregon State Police also are working with Bend police on the investigation, she said. The FBI also is offering help.

“Last night’s shooting was one of several in Oregon just this weekend,” Brown said. “The families of these victims will forever be impacted by these senseless acts. All Oregonians deserve to be safe from gun violence.”

The head of the union representing grocery workers at Safeway said he was “heartbroken to see American workers once again face the unthinkable.”

“In retail spaces, gun violence is becoming increasingly common,” " UFCW Local 555 President Dan Clay said in a statement. “What should have just been a normal evening erupted into a mass shooting event that cut lives short, and will forever leave scars in the community. Retail workers should not go to work facing violence, and deserve more protection than our society has chosen to afford them.”

Safeway employee Jake Daniels told The Bulletin that he heard three shots followed by another six. After the first shots, he said started grabbing people and running out the store doors.

Three months ago, a white gunman killed 10 Black people at the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, including one customer who came from volunteering at a food bank and another had been tending to her husband at his nursing home. Most of the victims in the May 14 shooting were in their 50s and older.

Last September, a gunman attacked a Kroger grocery store in Collierville, Tennessee, a suburban community 30 miles east of Memphis, killing one, wounding more than a dozen people and then killing himself.

Bend Mayor Pro-Tem Anthony Broadman rushed to the shopping mall off U.S. 20 in eastern Bend when he heard the news and later stood with the police chief as Krantz described what happened earlier that night. The popular center is also home to a Big Lots store and Old Navy.

The realization that a mass shooting had struck the city of 100,000 was “shocking” and “horrific,” he said, and yet somehow grimly predictable.

“This is the gun culture that we’ve allowed ourselves to live in,” he said Monday. “Our little city here in the mountains is grieving.”

Broadman said he was impressed with the coordination between local police, the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, state troopers and federal agents who quickly secured the scene of the shooting and then spread out to make sure surrounding areas were safe as callers reported a possible second shooter. Police found no other gunman.

Broadman said he spoke with the governor by phone and has fielded an outpouring of support from other mayors across the state. He later learned that one of his friends was inside the grocery store at the time of the shooting but wasn’t hurt.

“Today is a day to mourn and grieve and re-galvanize our efforts to make sure that Bend is a safe place to live,” he said. “Because right now it doesn’t feel like that. You can’t go shopping, you can’t go to church, you can’t go to school — and that’s unacceptable.”

Broadman said the shooting would affect generations of residents, including many children, recalling how he learned as a child that someone had once shot at his father.

But he said the Safeway shooting wouldn’t disrupt the city’s functions, including a forum on homelessness planned Monday night. A community vigil was also planned later Monday.

“It’s a very dark day for Bend and a dark night,” he said. “There’s a lot of trauma in this big family right now.”

Police have set up a tip line at 541-322-6380 and ask people to call with any information they think would help the investigation.

-- Oregonian reporters Zane Sparling and Noelle Crombie and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

-- Savannah Eadens; seadens@oregonian.com; 503-221-6651; @savannaheadens

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