FORDYCE, Ark. (AP) — The sounds that filled the Mad Butcher grocery store on Tuesday — the beeping barcode scanners, the rattle of shopping carts and cash register drawers opening — were familiar ones for customers and employees of the only grocery store in the small Arkansas town of Fordyce.
But this was not a normal day for the store, which reopened 11 days after a shooter killed four people and injured 10 others in Mad Butcher and its parking lot. Community leaders called Tuesday's reopening an important part of the healing process for a town of 3,200 shocked by the mass shooting.
“It's more than a store,” said Dallas County Sheriff Mike Knoedel, who had responded to the shooting and was on hand for the store's reopening. “It's a meeting place. Every time I'm in this store, I'm in it two or three times a week, you're talking to neighbors. Everybody knows everybody."
The store's closure left Fordyce without a grocery store and few nearby alternatives in the aftermath of the shooting, prompting several food distribution sites to be set up throughout the community. Though the town has a Walmart and discount retailers with some food options, the closest grocery stores or supermarkets are located in neighboring cities at least half an hour away.