King was identified by his family on Thursday as the victim killed in the mass shooting that sent 14 other people to hospitals, 13 of them with gunshot wounds.
The shooter was also found dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Police Chief Dale Lane said. Authorities have yet to release the names of the victims or the gunman.
The shooter was not a Kroger employee, company spokeswoman Kristal Howard told CNN on Friday. But Howard declined to say if the suspect was a contractor.
Lane declined to characterize the relationship between the shooter and the store.
Thirteen people were taken to hospitals with gunshot wounds as a result of the shooting, and one person entered a hospital with an anxiety attack, Lane said.
To survive, some workers hid in freezers or locked themselves in offices. Another employee ran to the roof, which the police escorted until it was safe to do so.
“They were doing what they were trained to do: run, hide, fight,” Lane said.
Witnesses described the chaos that ensued when they heard the gunshots for the first time.
Jason Lusk told CNN he was leaving a tool store next to Kroger when he saw people walking out of the store shouting that there was a gunman.
When he didn’t see anyone at first, Lusk said he started walking towards his car. “That’s when I heard about 10 to 15 gunshots. It looked like they were directly over my head. Very close. It looked like a semi-rifle to me. high power automatic, ”he said.
Another witness, Brignetta Dickerson, was working on a cash register when the shooting started in the deli section, she said. When she and some of her colleagues ran to hide, the gunman moved behind them and started shooting, she told CNN affiliate WMC.
“He kept shooting, shooting, shooting,” Dickerson said. “He shot one of my coworkers in the head, then one of the clients in the stomach, and then my other client got a bit like cuts from the asphalt.”
Dickerson, who said she had worked at Kroger for almost 32 years, was scared and shaky after the shooting, but overall she was feeling fine.
The International Union of United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents workers at the Kroger supermarket, said it was working with the local to help those affected by the shooting.
CNN’s Andy Rose, Ryan Young, Devon M. Sayers, Rebekah Riess, Jenn Selva and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.
