Last updated: July 23rd, 2009 12:15 AM (PDT)
The woman, a civilian vendor working inside the PX, was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Madigan Army Medical Center. The gunman, a 59-year-old former sergeant first class, died hours later.
The identities of both are being withheld, pending family notification. Post officials would not say what the relationship between the gunman and victim was or speculate on a motive.
A family friend – and employee of The News Tribune – told the newspaper the victim was Sharlona White, 33.
White’s mother, Rose Braggs, said she learned through news reports that her daughter had died after being shot about 11:30 a.m. while working at her kiosk at the PX.
“He killed my baby,” Braggs said in a telephone interview from her Tacoma home Wednesday afternoon. “My baby’s gone.”
Braggs said she believed the man who shot her daughter was a former boyfriend who White had left seven months ago.
“She didn’t want him,” Braggs said. “She was trying hard to get away from him. He just wouldn’t give her up.”
Braggs said the ex-boyfriend had threatened her daughter before and had told her he was going to kill himself.
“We called the police and everything,” she said. “We kept on saying (to her) get a restraining order.”
Braggs said her daughter, a Foss High School graduate, worked “all the time, seven days a week” to support herself and her two children, ages 10 and 14.
“She was a wonderful person,” Braggs said.
White was working in her kiosk Wednesday when she was killed.
The shots, as many as five fired from a single weapon, sparked panic in the Wal-Mart-size shopping center, whose shops and fast-food restaurants were jammed for the daily lunch rush.
Kathy Johnson and her mother, Kazui Miller, were shopping on opposite sides of the PX when the shooting started.
“Everyone ran in every direction,” said Johnson, a 44-year-old Tacoma native who now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Everyone was yelling, ‘Call 911!’”
Johnson dived under a rack of women’s clothes and tried calling the police. The line was busy. She tried again.
“It just rang and rang and rang,” she said. “So I called my husband back home, and he called 911 and was patched through to the Fort Lewis operator.”
A woman sat beside her under the rack, screaming and sobbing uncontrollably, Johnson said.
“Everyone in the store thought it was a mass shooting because of the number of gunshots,” she said. “My heart was racing. We weren’t sure if a gunman was coming for us.”
Military policemen arrived at the kiosk about five minutes after the shooting, Garcia said. The man had already shot himself when the MPs arrived.
Around them the store soon fell quiet, the silence broken only by the woman’s screams and the music over the intercom, Johnson said. Minutes later a voice came over a loudspeaker and told everyone to move to the back of the store.
The woman next to Johnson was still in hysterics.
“She kept saying, ‘Oh, my God, I’m about to die,’” Johnson said, adding she shook her enough to run out of the store with her.
Chaplains soon arrived to provide counseling. Police moved people from the scene, closed the PX and cordoned off the area.
Gus Tarantino was going to meet his wife, an Army psychologist, for lunch at 11:30 a.m. By the time he got to the PX, the military police were diverting traffic.
“We saw the fire trucks and ambulances and they were escorting everybody out of the building,” said Tarantino, a 31-year-old Puyallup resident. Though most civilians are not allowed to use the PX, the gunman would have had access because he was a retired soldier.
The FBI took over jurisdiction of the case and will investigate with help from Fort Lewis law enforcement and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. The FBI is spearheading the case because both the victim and gunman were civilians, I Corps spokesman Maj. Mike Garcia said.
Concealed firearms are not allowed on Fort Lewis, Garcia said. Any firearm on post must be registered and, when in a car, unloaded with the ammunition stored separately.
“There is no reason to bring a loaded firearm onto this installation, nor is it authorized,” he said.
In addition to her running her kiosk at Fort Lewis, White sold fashion accessories and jewelry at McChord Air Force Base, Braggs said.
She opened a retail custom fashion store in Fife in November 2006 and closed it last year. The store, ZnZ Wear, was named for her two children, whose first names begin with the letter Z.
P.K. MacLean, executive director of the Fife Regional Chamber of Commerce, remembered White being “really enthusiastic” about her business.
“She was very passionate about it,” MacLean said.
A 2007 story in the Fife Free Press about White and her business noted she used her fashion talents to aid others. She helped with a Boys & Girls Clubs fashion show every year. She also assisted a family from Uganda by selling their handmade necklaces.
White said her goal was to have several stores as well as be a manufacturer.
She said what inspired her most was her faith and her mother.
“I love my mom,” White said. “She’s my best friend. ... Friends come and go but nobody’s like a mom.”
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