Indiana mall gunman: ‘A lot more people would be dead’: Gunman bystander killed gunman who had 3 guns and 100 rounds, police say
The 20-year-old, identified as Douglas Sapirman, used only an AR 15 type rifle during the shooting, firing 24 rounds before being shot by a bystander less than two minutes into the attack. attack, according to Greenwood police.
As Sapirman fired bullets from a restroom area in the mall’s food court, Elisjsha Dicken, 22, of Seymour, Indiana, fired 10 shots at Sapirman with her Glock handgun, evading » many more » deaths, Greenwood Police Chief James Ison said at a news conference on Monday.
“He engaged the shooter from a distance with a handgun – was very skilled at it, very tactically sound and as he closed in on the suspect he was also waving people out behind him,” said Ison said. “Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen who acted very quickly within the first two minutes of the shooting.”
Dicken was legally armed, Ison said.
The slain victims have been identified as Indianapolis couple Pedro Pineda, 56, and Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda, 37, and Victor Gomez, 30, also from Indianapolis.
On Monday, police were still looking for a motive for the shooting in Greenwood, about 15 miles south of Indianapolis.
« Family members we spoke to were just as surprised as everyone else, » Ison said. « They said there was no indication that he was violent or unstable. »
Sapirman had several minor misdemeanors, including a fight at school, but he did not have an adult criminal record, Ison said. Family members told investigators he quit a warehouse job in May, Ison said.
The AR 15-style rifle was purchased legally March 8 in Greenwood, the police chief said. The second rifle was purchased on March 9, 2021 from an armory in Greenwood.
Mall surveillance video showed Sapirman entering the mall from the food court just before 5 p.m. Sunday. He went straight to the restroom in the food court, where he stayed for just over an hour before emerging holding a gun, Ison said.
Sapirman first shot Gomez, then aimed his gun at the food court, where he fatally shot the Pinedas, who were dining at the time of the shooting, Ison said.
The shooter continued to fire into the food court, hitting a 22-year-old woman in the leg. A 12-year-old girl – identified by her mother, Alison Dick, as Bella – was hit by a bullet fragment that ricocheted off a wall, according to Ison.
A lawyer for Dicken, Guy A. Relford, said in a statement to CNN that his client is « a true American hero who saved countless lives in a horrific event that could have been so much worse but for the courage, the preparedness and Eli’s willingness to protect others. »
Cases of an armed bystander attacking an active shooter are rare, according to data from Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training.
There have been at least 434 active shooter attacks in the United States from 2000 to 2021, according to ALERRT data. Active shooter attacks were defined as those in which one or more shooters killed or attempted to kill multiple unrelated people in a populated location.
Of these 434 active shooter cases, an armed bystander shot the assailant in 22 of the incidents. In 10 of them, the « good guy » was a security guard or an off-duty police officer, according to ALERRT data.
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