Family of woman killed in Kroger shooting speaks for first time
By ALEXANDRIA ADAMS
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COLLIERVILLE, TN (WSMV) — The family of the woman killed in the Collierville Kroger shooting spoke for the first time.
On Sept. 23, police identified the suspect from the deadly mass shooting at Collierville Kroger as a 29-year-old UK Thang. Police told News 4 that ten employees and five customers were injured during the shooting. Oliva King was the only person killed that day, and her sons, Jason, Wes, and Greg, are sharing her story.
“This was a private citizen and his son who while the shooting was still going on…rather than fleeing for their own lives…which again would be totally understandable in the situation,” Wes King said. “They saw my mother on the ground, applied pressure to her wounds without even thinking about the risks themselves. They stayed with her, they held her, they prayed with her until the paramedics got there.”
King was inside the store grocery shopping at the time. King’s sons said they are heartbroken, but they’ll continue to rely on their faith to give through it all.
“I think a lot of people expected us to respond with a cry for vengeance, a cry of anger or a cry of righteous, justice or something along those lines,” said Wes King. “It would be easy to give in to that. It would be easy to give in to anger and fury and understandable, but we are called to something higher by our faith.”
Her sons said they pray this situation will encourage American leaders to do something about gun violence. King’s visitation will be Friday from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Catholic Church of the Incarnation.
Her funeral will be at that church Saturday at 10 a.m. The King family said the public is welcome to attend both the visitation and funeral.
“How I hope her legacy manifests in myself is to be more like she was to me these last couple of years, to be just relentless in forgiveness, in patience, and in love,” Greg King said.
Thang was asked to leave his job on Thursday morning, the day of the shooting, police said. Thang moved to the area in the summer of 2020 and police said he was a third-party vendor who worked inside Kroger.
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