Suspect In Huntsville WalMart Shooting Dies
By: Stephen Crews
Updated: December 7, 2010
Investigators are still trying to piece together the events that led to Monday's deadly shooting outside the University Drive Walmart in Huntsville, but they say 25-year-old Stan Malone's death was the result of a domestic incident. Malone and 41-year-old Martha White of New Market were shot outside the store where they both worked shortly after noon. Malone was killed. White was hit in the neck.
Shopper Jennifer White says, "I just saw two people down on the ground... She was screaming, 'someone help us, please.' He was laying face down, and his eyes were closed." White, a registered nurse, did her best to help White who was later treated and released from Huntsville Hospital. She's now recovering at home.
Police say the shooter, Lucas Allen Bates, Junior had been in a relationship with White, but the two were no longer dating. It's still unknown whether Malone had any sort of relationship with White, or whether he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After the shooting, investigators say Bates went
to back to his home on Old Railroad Bed Road in Taft. Bates shot himself
and was found by a family member then rushed to Vanderbilt Hospital in
Nashville. He died Tuesday morning.
As for the witnesses to the scene on University Drive, the shooting isn't something they'll soon forget. Heather Curtis, who works in that shopping center, says, "we walk through this parking lot every day, without a thought in the world. To be so close here, if there had been a stray bullet, it was aimed right here. It just didn't make you feel like you were safe anywhere."
