Horror, trauma follow couple who witnessed deadly Walmart shooting first-hand
‘It was the scariest thing I had ever seen.’
BUTLER COUNTY, Ohio (WXIX) - Two witnesses to the Walmart shooting Thursday night are feeling the trauma reverberate through their lives one day later.
Megan Powell and David Picagli are engaged and share an 8-year-old daughter. They were at the Walmart in Fairfield Township to grab hot dogs and other items before Memorial Day weekend. It quickly turned into a nightmare.
“I saw the gunshot hit the... hit the man,” David said Friday. “H-he was shot in the head.”
“It was the most terrifying moment of my life,” Megan said.
Police identified the shooter early Friday morning as Anthony Freeman Brown, 32, of Hamilton. He was taken into custody in Middletown around 4 a.m. on charges of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and having weapons under disability, according to jail records.
Brown shot to death Adam Lee Black, a 35-year-old Columbus man, according to the Butler County Coroner’s Office. It happened, police say, after a store worker intervened as Brown was trying to steal an item from the electronics department. Another person was also shot and later hospitalized in critical condition.
Megan was one of the 911 callers. She told the call taker she heard shots. “Everybody’s running,” she said breathlessly.
David struggles to put into the words the traumatic experience that he still seems to be experiencing in real time.
“It’s... It’s difficult to think about it... over and over... But fortunately I have... It was the scariest thing I had ever seen,” he said.
Megan says once the shots were fired, panic and chaos ensued, and she hid under a cash register.
“I went flying,” she recalled. “I hit my face on the cash register.”
David had gotten outside. Megan was under the conveyer belt of the cash register, still on the 911 call, where the operator had placed her on hold after reassuring her that multiple officers were coming to her location. Megan started praying: “God, God please.”
A bruised knee and face are her visible marks from that night. The damage is, for the most part, on the inside.
Megan went to work today, but, as with her husband, the experience remained with her. The sound of construction or the elevator... even papers falling to the ground... all of it bade her back, flinch by flinch, wince by wince, to that harrowing experience of 24 hours ago.
Then she closes her eyes, and it’s the image she sees that haunts her: “The man lying on the floor in the pool of his own blood... Because I knew that could have been us moments before. We had been in that exact spot.”
Now the couple is able to embrace one another and their daughter. But the survivor’s guilt is real, and they’re both brimming with emotions they don’t yet have words to express.
“Still some anxiety,” David said, “and still somewhat afraid that this was possible and this was real... this did happen here.”
Added Megan, “You’re not promised tomorrow. You’re not promised the next second, because anything can happen.”
The couple says they plan on seeing a counselor as they try to cope with what happened.
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