Fordyce (Arkansas) football coach reacts after mass shooting kills 3

A gunman shot 11 civilians at the small town’s grocery store Friday

Fordyce football coach Tim Rodgers (left) was in his front yard not far from the grocery store where a mass shooting occurred in the small, rural town Friday. /

Friday started off pretty leisurely for Fordyce High School head football coach Tim Rodgers.

With the Arkansas High School Activities Association’s mandated ‘dead period’ in effect, there were no practices or team activities Friday. As it neared lunch time in the small town, he was in his front yard visiting with one of the coaches on his staff when he began receiving text messages from Redbugs players and other coaches.

It took a few minutes before the two coaches heard sirens of law enforcement responding to the incident.

3 dead in mass shooting at Arkansas grocery store | What we know so far https://t.co/h2gai46CDA

— THV11 (@THV11) June 21, 2024

Local authorities said at 11:37 a.m. Friday that a gunman began shooting near the Mad Butcher grocery store in a parking lot that several businesses in the complex share. Eleven civilians were shot and three were killed. Two law enforcement officers were wounded as was the suspect, 44-year-old Travis Posey.

Rodgers said that none of his players or coaches or their families were affected by the shooting, but another member of the coaching staff reported to Rodgers that he was in a store near the Mad Butcher that was on ‘lock down.’

“We sent [all the players] home Thursday, so we were trying to get ahold of everybody to make sure they were OK,” he said. “Thankfully, everyone that we got ahold of is OK and taken care of, but in a small town like this we know we would know people who were shot and injured and killed, and that is a bad feeling.”

Reality set in for the coach when he drove to the school grounds to help arrange for three med flight helicopters to land there to get the seriously wounded to a medical center in Little Rock, which is just over 70 miles from the rural south Arkansas town that has a population of a little more than 3,000. He also said he saw the throng of police cars in the Mad Butcher parking lot that isn’t far from his home.

JUST IN:
Arkansas State Police has named the suspected shooter in today’s Fordyce grocery store shooting as Travis Eugene Posey, 44, of New Edinburg pic.twitter.com/VCNFdmHTed

— Brooke Buckner (@Brookebucknertv) June 22, 2024

Rodgers said his daughter works at the Dallas County Medical Center, the small local hospital where some victims had been treated. She had been working all day.

“It just seems like it can’t be real,” he said. “You never expect anything like this happening in Fordyce. You see it on TV, but you never think it would happen here in a small town like this.”

Rodgers, a Monticello, Ark., native, has lived in Fordyce, the hometown of legendary college football coach Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant, for 39 years. He said it’s a town where there is little crime, and it’s not uncommon for people to leave their doors unlocked. He said some of that security disappeared Friday.

“I’ve seen [Posey] around town before,” he said. “I’ve seen him walking around. That is scary. I think [the shooting] is going to have people being a little gun-shy looking around. This has shaken some people. It's just really hard to believe."

Rodgers, who has served as the Redbugs’ head coach since 2010 and won Class 2A state titles in 2019 and 2020 with a runner-up finish in 2021, said it will take some time for the town to return to normal and heal.

“For one thing, we just lost our only grocery store for a while,” he said. “It probably won’t be open anytime soon. And in a town like this, when you have people who died, you know there are many here who are going to know them. We have already heard who some of them are, and we know them and their families. That’s going to happen in small town, and that is tough.”

--Nate Olson | nate@scorebooklive.com | @ndosports