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Insets, from left: Zeddrick Ross (Faulkner County Jail) and Jordanne Drinkwater (Jordanne Drinkwater/Facebook). Background: The Walmart in Conway, Arkansas, where Ross allegedly stabbed Drinkwater to death (Google Maps).
Tragedy struck an Arkansas Walmart when an employee, simply carrying out her duties, was reportedly stabbed to death in a horrifying incident described by authorities as a “random act of violence.” The unsettling event unfolded at the Walmart located on Skyline Drive in Conway, roughly 30 miles north of Little Rock, late on the night of March 31.
Zeddrick Ross, 37, stands accused of first-degree murder in the death of 32-year-old Jordanne Drinkwater, the Conway Police Department said.
Police officers were dispatched around 11 p.m. responding to reports of an ongoing stabbing. Upon arrival, they allegedly encountered the suspect, still wielding a knife. In an attempt to subdue the attacker, an officer discharged a firearm but missed, while another officer successfully deployed a Taser, allowing them to apprehend the suspect. Tragically, the victim, identified as Drinkwater, was pronounced dead by medical personnel at the scene.
Details from an arrest affidavit, as reported by Law&Crime, reveal a troubling narrative. The suspect, Ross, reportedly believed he was being pursued by a demon. In response to this delusion, he allegedly stole a large knife from a nearby Walgreens, followed by a machete from the Walmart. Ross claimed the demon appeared to him as a light-skinned Black woman with brown eyes and a weave.
Mistaking Drinkwater for this perceived demon, Ross allegedly attacked her, inflicting fatal stab wounds to her shoulder and neck. This senseless act has left a community in mourning and raised questions about the circumstances leading up to this tragic event.
He saw Drinkwater from a distance and thought she was the demon, so he allegedly stabbed her in the shoulder and neck.
“After the stabbing Zeddrick looked down and realized that the female laying on the ground was not the demon, and looked nothing like the demon he thought he was killing,” cops wrote. “The individual he was stabbing was actually Jordanne Drinkwater, who is an employee of Walmart who was just working her normal shift.”
Cops are still working to see if there was any other motive or connection between the two.
“I hate to sit there and speculate and say anything like ‘random act of violence,’ but it truly was—there was no correlation between the [victim and suspect] that we found yet, or I was not informed of,” police spokesman Daniel Hogan told local ABC affiliate KATV.
Those who knew Drinkwater spoke highly of her.
“I never met somebody as pure as Jordan,” her friend Sam Slaughter told KATV. “I still don’t understand why it had to be her. She helped change my entire life for the better — everything from staying sober to the way I think about the world and how it works and not putting more hate into it and just trying to do better. She was an amazing human being. She’s going to be so, so missed.”
Ross is at the Faulkner County Jail on a $1 million bond. He’s next slated to appear in court on April 20.