A 20-year-old man with a rifle and handgun with access to another rifle and more than 100 rounds of ammunition was killed by a bystander two minutes after he began firing at diners at a shopping mall food court in Greenwood, Ind., the officials said. authorities Monday.
By this time, the gunman, identified by police as Jonathan Douglas Sapirman, 20, had already killed three people and injured two others. But the deadly attack on Sunday was aborted by a 22-year-old bystander who carried a gun while shopping with his girlfriend.
Greenwood Police Department chief Jim Ison called the bystander’s actions “downright heroic,” identifying him as Elishsha Dicken of Seymour, Ind.
“He attacked the gunman from a considerable distance with a pistol, was very skilled at it, very tactically good, and as he approached the suspect he also gestured for people to get out of behind him,” Chief Commissioner Ison said. at a press conference where he described surveillance video footage of the shooting.
The Johnson County coroner identified the victims, all of whom were from Indianapolis, as Victor Gomez, 30; and a man and woman, Pedro Pineda, 56, and Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda, 37. Two other people were injured: a 22-year-old woman who was hospitalized with a leg wound and a 12-year-old girl who was struck by a bullet fragment.
All the victims were shot by Mr Sapirman, who fired 24 rounds, Chief Ison said. mr. Dicken fired 10 shots and killed the gunman as he tried to retreat to the bathroom of a shopping center where he had spent an hour preparing for the attack.
The chief said there was no clear motive for the shooting.
There was no indication the gunman was violent or unstable, his relatives told police, but he had recently received an eviction notice and resigned from a warehouse position in May. Chief Ison said the gunman had previous encounters with local police, including before a fight at school.
Over the past two years, relatives told police, the gunman had practiced shooting regularly at a shooting range in Greenwood, about 15 miles south of Indianapolis.
Mr Sapirman brought three guns to the Greenwood Park Mall, police said: the gun he used in the shooting, a Sig Sauer M400 rifle he bought in March 2022; an M&P15 rifle found in the mall bathroom and purchased in March 2021; and discovered a Glock 33 pistol on his body. The guns were legally purchased in Greenwood, police said.
When the gunman entered the mall just before 5 p.m., Chief Ison said, he went straight to the food court bathroom, spent about an hour inside before going out and targeting dozens of people eating.
Two minutes later, Mr. Dicken shot the gunman dead.
When the police arrived, they handcuffed Mr. Dicken and took him to a station for questioning, where CCTV footage confirmed his description of the events. Chief Ison said police were unable to determine whether Mr Dicken had a firearms license, but that he was legally carrying his Glock 9-millimeter pistol under the state’s constitutional carrying law.
“This young man, the Good Samaritan of Greenwood, acted in seconds, stopped the gunman and saved countless lives,” Mayor Mark Myers said Monday.
Police officers issued a search warrant on Sunday evening at a Greenwood apartment where the gunman lived alone, and discovered a laptop and a can of butane in the oven, which had been heated to a high temperature.
The laptop was damaged by the heat but would be analyzed, the chief said. Police are also trying to retrieve data from a soggy cell phone that they believe the gunman placed in a restroom in the mall’s bathroom.
Greenwood, a city of about 63,000 residents, is shocked by the shooting.
“I don’t want to be with the mayors having to share these statements, but unfortunately I am,” Mr Myers said. “I mourn these senseless killings, and I grieve for the scars left on the victims and on our community.”
Hours after the mall shooting, four people were shot, including one fatality, during an unrelated vigil at a park in Beech Grove, nine miles north of Greenwood.
