Police laud actions of man who killed mall attacker
— A gunman who shot five people at a suburban Indianapolis shopping mall, killing three of them before a shopper shot and killed him, was a 20-year-old local man who was apparently facing eviction, authorities said Monday.
Jonathan Sapirman, of Greenwood, began firing after leaving a bathroom at the Greenwood Park Mall shortly before it closed Sunday evening, the city’s police chief, James Ison, said at a news conference.
Sapirman continued shooting people until he was shot and killed by 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, of Seymour, a city about 72 kilometres south of Greenwood, who was shopping with his girlfriend, Ison said, calling Dicken’s quick action “nothing short of heroic.”
“Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen,” said the chief, noting that authorities were still trying to determine a motive for the attack.
The Johnson County and Marion County coroners’ offices identified the slain victims as a married Indianapolis couple — Pedro Pineda, 56, and Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda, 37 — and Victor Gomez, 30, also of Indianapolis. A woman and a 12-year-old girl who was hit by shrapnel were wounded in the attack, police said.
Although authorities said Dicken was legally armed, the mall prohibits people from carrying weapons on its property.
As of July 1, Indiana law allows anyone age 18 or older to carry a handgun in public except for those prohibited for reasons such as having a felony conviction, facing a restraining order or having a dangerous mental illness as determined by a court. Indiana’s Republican-dominated legislature retained provisions in the law that allow private property owners to prohibit firearms.
Authorities said Sunday that four of the victims were female and one was male, but they corrected that Monday to two males and three females.
Ison said Sapirman entered the mall and walked into a bathroom, where he spent about an hour before he emerged and opened fire. He said investigators believe Sapirman spent that time preparing and possibly assembling a disassembled rifle that he had brought in his backpack. He ended up firing 24 rounds within two minutes.
Ison said Sapirman used an AR-15-style rifle during the shooting and that investigators found another one and magazines with more than 100 rounds of ammunition in the bathroom. They also found a handgun on Sapirman.
Although police don’t know a motive for the attack, Sapirman’s relatives told investigators that he recently received notice that he was being evicted from his apartment, though Ison said authorities were still trying to confirm that. Relatives also said Sapirman resigned from a warehouse job in May, he said.
The chief said Dicken fired 10 rounds from his handgun, and that as he fired, Sapirman “attempted to retreat back into the restroom and failed, and fell to the ground after being shot.”
“He engaged the gunman from quite a distance with a handgun and 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,” Ison said of Dicken.
Sapirman had a juvenile record, including for a fight at school and an incident where he ran away from home, but he had no criminal record as an adult, the chief said.