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Robert S. Gooch IV had served overseas in the military, had been deployed to Afghanistan more than once and had never been injured, his father said.

But on Tuesday evening, Gooch was fatally shot during a trip to the store with his teenage daughter to buy a bag of popcorn before watching a movie, said the victim’s father, Robert Gooch III.

Police believe Gooch and the man who shot him outside a Wawa store off Hull Street Road in Chesterfield County did not know each other. A motive for the shooting was unclear Wednesday.

Robert Gooch IV, a 34-year-old father of three children, was shot multiple times while returning to his vehicle from the store, the authorities said. During the encounter, Gooch pushed his 13-year-old daughter down to get her out of the way and told her to “get down,” the victim’s father said. “Then he told her to call me.”

“He’s an Army officer and he understands how to give orders and get things done,” the father said in a phone interview Wednesday. “He’s not somebody who would ever panic. He was calm and in charge.”