Black Pastors hold vigil for victims in Walmart shooting

It has been five days since Lorenzo Gamble was killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia. Because she misses him so much, his mother, Linda Gamble, hasn’t been able to do much of anything, including eat.
Gamble said that it has been really hard because they never in a million years thought it would be their baby. “Although he is no longer with us, he will always be in our hearts.”
Before a prayer vigil at The Mount Chesapeake church that honored her son and five other employees who police say were fatally shot by a store supervisor, Gamble spoke Sunday evening. Six others who were wounded in the Tuesday rampage were also honored.
The vigil, which lasted for 90 minutes and was filled with music, hand raising and invocations of God, was an effort by the Chesapeake Coalition of Black Pastors to provide some kind of balm for a community that is still raw from the violence.
Dozens of people who had lost someone to the carnage, or knew a person who was wounded or who works at the store, stood with Gamble and her husband Alonzo by the end of the service.
Shelia Bell, 70, a Walmart employee who worked with Lorenzo Gamble, a custodian at the store for 15 years, was among them. She said the shooter, who died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene, was also known to her.

“I’m feeling really numb right now,” said Bell.
For each of the victims, a tall purple candle was lit during the vigil. Gamble was 43, Chavez-Barron was 16, Pyle was 52, Johnson was 22, Pendleton was 38, and Blevins was 70.
“I cannot begin to understand the pain you felt while waiting to hear about your loved ones or the horror you felt when you got the phone call,” state Sen. Mamie Locke said earlier. What we can do is come together as a community and provide support for each other.
“Now Chesapeake joins the list of all too many communities forced to bear the unbearable,” said Congressman Bobby Scott of the city of about 250,000 people near the Atlantic coast.
“I cannot begin to understand the pain you must have felt while waiting to hear about your loved ones, or the horror of that phone call when it came,” state Sen. Mamie Locke said earlier. “What we can do is come together as a community and provide support for each other.”
“Now Chesapeake joins the list of all too many communities forced to bear the unbearable,” said Congressman Bobby Scott of the city of about 250,000 people near the Atlantic coast.