An armed bystander appears to have intervened to stop an active shooter in Indiana Sunday night, likely saving additional lives.
Authorities say four people are dead, including the suspected attacker, and two others are wounded after an unidentified gunman entered the food court at Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana and opened fire Sunday night. Investigators say the attack was stopped when a 22-year-old “good Samaritan” armed with a handgun fatally wounded the attacker.
“We believe at this time, investigators are still questioning the individual involved, but it appears that a good Samaritan that was armed observed the shooting in progress and shot the shooter,” Jim Ison, the chief of police for Greenwood, Indiana, said at a Sunday night news conference.
Police said the wounded victims were transported to the hospital. They did not have any further information as to the status of their injuries.
“What we do know right now is that we have what appears to be one shooter, who looks to be an adult male,” Ison told reporters. “We have not identified him yet and we do not have a motive yet.”
“It appears that he had a rifle with several magazines of ammunition, he entered the food court, and began shooting,” he said.
Greenwood police officials are expected to provide further updates during a press conference at 2 pm on Monday.
Active shooter incidents, defined by the FBI as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area,” have been on the rise in recent years. The most recent report found that there were 61 such incidents in 2021, an increase of 96.8 percent from 2017.
In four of those incidents last year, an armed citizen intervened to stop an active shooter.
2 Responses
Thank you, first I’d heard about this incident is from here.
Some definitions to consider, thank you for interviewing Katherine Schweit:
I would rather see “mass familial, crime, public violence with knife, gun, pipe, etc.” instead, but cultural changes and definitions take time.
I also accept Gun Violence Archive’s inclusion of injured in an incident, but mainstream media is not breaking down the numbers, and by motive either. For the longest time, I was hornswaggled with that “40,000 gunned down each year!” type of propaganda.
As always (too often in these times), it’s good policy to wait a few days for investigation into motive, how the criminal’s gun was obtained, any warning signs, social media posts, etc. That said, the police chief was confident enough to reveal the civilian who took down the shooter was legally armed. Law abiding gun owners I know carry because they know real threats exist; a fact that no one likes.