A 20-year-old man carrying a rifle and pistol with access to another rifle and more than 100 rounds of ammunition was killed by a bystander two minutes after he began spraying gunfire at diners inside a mall food court in Greenwood, Ind., the authorities said on Monday, the New York Times reports. By that time, the gunman, identified by the police as Jonathan Douglas Sapirman, 20, had already killed three people and injured two others. But the deadly spree on Sunday was cut short by a 22-year-old bystander carrying a handgun while shopping with his girlfriend. Chief Jim Ison of the Greenwood Police Department called the bystander’s actions “nothing short of heroic,” identifying him as Elisjsha Dicken of Seymour, Ind. “He engaged the gunman from quite a distance with a handgun, was very proficient in that, very tactically sound, and, as he moved to close in on the suspect, he was also motioning for people to exit behind him,” Chief Ison said at a news conference where he described surveillance video footage of the shooting.
The Johnson County coroner identified the victims, who were all from Indianapolis, as Victor Gomez, 30; and a husband and wife, Pedro Pineda, 56, and Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda, 37. Two additional people were injured: a 22-year-old woman hospitalized with a leg wound and a 12-year-old girl struck by a bullet fragment. All the victims were shot by Sapirman, who fired 24 rounds, Chief Ison said. Dicken fired 10 rounds, killing the gunman as he tried to retreat to a mall bathroom where he had spent an hour apparently preparing for the attack. Sapirman brought three weapons into the Greenwood Park Mall, the police said: the gun he used in the shooting, a Sig Sauer M400 rifle he bought in March 2022; an M&P15 rifle that was found in the mall bathroom and bought in March 2021; and a Glock 33 pistol discovered on his body. The rifles were legally purchased in Greenwood, the police said. When the gunman entered the mall just before 5 p.m., Chief Ison said, he walked directly to the food court’s bathroom, spending about an hour inside before exiting and taking aim at dozens of people eating dinner. Two minutes later, Dicken fatally shot the gunman.
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