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Here’s what we know about the victims of the Boulder shooting

The victims ranged from age 20 to 65. Some of them were shopping at the store; some worked there. One was a police officer who arrived to help.

  • By NPR
Bouquets line a fence put up around the parking lot where a mass shooting took place the day before in a King Soopers grocery store, Tuesday, March 23, 2021, in Boulder, Colo.

 David Zalubowski / AP Photo

Bouquets line a fence put up around the parking lot where a mass shooting took place the day before in a King Soopers grocery store, Tuesday, March 23, 2021, in Boulder, Colo.

(Boulder, Colo.) — A gunman shot and killed 10 people at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colo., on Monday afternoon.

The victims ranged from age 20 to 65. Some of them were shopping at the store; some worked there. One was a police officer who arrived to help.

Here’s what we know about the lives that they lived. We will update this story as we learn more.

Eric Talley, 51

Boulder police Officer Eric Talley is being mourned as a brave officer as well as a husband, a brother and father to seven children.

“Officer Eric Talley is my big brother. He died today in the Boulder shooting,” a woman who identified herself as Talley’s sister said on Twitter, posting a photo that appeared to show the two of them together when they were children.

“My heart is broken. I cannot explain how beautiful he was and what a devastating loss this is to so many,” she added. “Fly high my sweet brother. You always wanted to be a pilot (damn color blindness). Soar.”

Talley “responded to the scene, was the first on the scene, and he was fatally shot,” said Boulder police Chief Maris Herold, who described his “heroic action.”

A woman leaves a bouquet of flowers next to a police cruiser parked outside the Boulder Police Department after an officer was one of the victims of a mass shooting at a King Soopers grocery store Tuesday, March 23, 2021, in Boulder, Colo.

David Zalubowski / AP Photo

A woman leaves a bouquet of flowers next to a police cruiser parked outside the Boulder Police Department after an officer was one of the victims of a mass shooting at a King Soopers grocery store Tuesday, March 23, 2021, in Boulder, Colo.

She added, “I’m grateful for the police officers that responded, and I am so sorry about the loss of Officer Talley.”

Talley served a number of roles in his work for the police department and in support of the local community, Herold said. Talley reportedly held a master’s degree in computer science, but he switched careers around age 40.

“I can tell you that he’s a very kind man, and he didn’t have to go into policing, he had a profession before this, but he felt a higher calling,” Herold said of Talley on Tuesday.

She added, “He loved this community, and he’s everything that policing deserves and needs.”

In 2013, Talley and two other officers drew a crowd – and eventually, a round of applause – when they rescued ducklings that had been swept out of a creek and into a caged drainage ditch. It was Talley who waded into the water to coax the ducklings to a spot where his colleagues could scoop them up.

“He was drenched after this,” Sgt. Jack Walker said of Talley at the time. “They would go into these little pipes, and he would have to try and fish them out.”

Kevin Mahoney, 61

Erika Mahoney, news director at NPR member station KAZU on California’s central coast, remembered her father as representing “all things Love.”

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