Bend, Oregon, shooting: 66-year-old Safeway employee tried to disarm shooter, may have saved lives, police say

A 66-year-old Safeway employee engaged and attempted to disarm a gunman who opened fire at a store in Bend, Oregon, on Sunday evening, likely saving the lives of others, the Bend Police Department said Monday. 

That employee, Donald Ray Surrett, Jr., was killed in the shooting, as well as 84-year-old customer and Bend resident Glenn Edward Bennett. 

The gunman, identified by police on Monday as 20-year-old Ethan Miller, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at 7:08 p.m. in the produce section, four minutes after he started firing shots from the rifle in the parking lot, police said. 

“Surrett engaged with the shooter, attempted to disarm him, and may have very well prevented further deaths. Surrett acted heroically,” Bend police spokeswoman Sheila Miller said Monday. 

Miller opened fire at his apartment complex near the Safeway before driving to the store, authorities said. Police later found Molotov cocktails and a sawed off shotgun in his vehicle. 

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Josh Caba, a Bend resident, was about to leave the store with his four children when he first heard gunshots. 

“We started heading to the front. Then we heard I don’t know how many shots out front – six or seven. I immediately turned to my children and said, ‘Run!’ People were screaming,” Caba told KTVZ-TV, noting that he escaped out of the side entrance and jumped with his kids into a car that his wife had pulled up. “It was a horrifying experience.” 

Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said that police are still investigating a motive and how Miller acquired the guns. 

“In the face of the kind of chaos that we saw last night, we had brave first responders, brave citizens, people willing to stand up for their neighbors,” Mayor Pro Tem Anthony Broadman said Monday.