Multiple People Are Fatally Shot at a Walmart in Virginia

“I mean it’s sad, you know we’re a couple days before the Thanksgiving holiday,” Mr. Kosinski said.

In a shooting on over the weekend, five people were killed at an L.G.B.T.Q. club in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Earlier this month in Charlottesville, Va., three members of the University of Virginia football team were killed by a former football player, who opened fire in a garage, the authorities said.

Photos and videos from the scene of the Walmart shooting showed officers huddling around the entrance of the building, with numerous police vehicles parked in the large lot of the store. A large inflatable Santa Claus stood outside the store.

Mr. Kosinski said that officers were searching for more victims inside the Walmart shortly after midnight on Wednesday.

He noted that the large store “had a lot of hiding spots” for shoppers who had possibly sought cover during the shooting.

“People could get scared, they could be hiding,” Mr. Kosinski said. “We want to make sure that everyone is accounted for.”

The authorities directed relatives of people affected by the shooting to the Chesapeake Conference Center.

Chesapeake, a few miles south of Norfolk, had a population of about a quarter of a million people last year, according to the United States Census Bureau. It is near Virginia’s Atlantic coast and the border with North Carolina.

Sen. Mike Warner of Virginia, a Democrat, said in a statement that he was “sickened by reports of yet another mass shooting.”

Mike Ives contributed reporting.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.