GREENWOOD, IN –
Authorities on Monday identified the gunman who shot five people at a suburban Indianapolis shopping center, killing three of them, before he was shot and killed by a shopper as a 20-year-old local man.
Jonathan Sapirman, of Greenwood, started shooting after emerging from a restroom at the Greenwood Park Mall shortly before it closed Sunday night, Greenwood Police Chief James Ison said at a news conference.
Sapirman continued to shoot at people until Elisjsha Dicken, 22, of nearby Seymour, who was shopping with her girlfriend, shot him to death, Ison said.
“Many more people would have died last night had it not been for a responsible armed citizen,” the chief said, noting that authorities were still trying to determine a motive for the attack.
The Johnson County and Marion County coroner’s offices identified the slain victims as a married couple from Indianapolis: Pedro Pineda, 56, and Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda, 37, and Victor Gomez, 30, also from Indianapolis.
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 over the age of 18 to carry a firearm in public, except for prohibited reasons, such as having a felony conviction, facing a restraining order, or having a medical condition. mentally dangerous as determined by a court. The Republican-dominated Indiana Legislature retained provisions in the law that allow private owners to ban firearms.
Sunday’s attack was the latest in a series of mass shootings across the U.S. Schools, churches, grocery stores and a 4th of July parade near Chicago have become killing fields in recent months, though the The country’s staggering murder rate can often be seen most clearly in individual murders that rarely make major headlines.
Authorities said Sunday that four of the victims were women and one was a man, but on Monday they corrected two men and three women, including a woman and a 12-year-old girl who were injured.
Ison said that after Sapirman entered the mall, he went into a bathroom where he spent about an hour before coming out and opening 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 in two minutes.
Although police don’t know the motive for the attack, Sapirman’s relatives told investigators that he recently received an eviction notice from the apartment where he lived.
Greenwood is a suburb of about 60,000 people south of Indianapolis.
Callahan reported from Indianapolis. Arleigh Rodgers is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercover issues.