Three people were fatally shot and two injured at an Indiana mall after a man with a rifle opened fire in a food court and an armed civilian shot and killed him, police said.
The man entered the Greenwood Park Mall with a rifle and several magazines of ammunition and began firing in the food court on Sunday evening, said the Greenwood police department chief, Jim Ison.
An armed bystander killed the man, Ison said. In total, four people were killed.
“The real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court and was able to stop the shooter almost as soon as he began,” Ison told reporters. He described the armed bystander as a 22-year-old man.
Officers went to the mall about 6pm over reports of the shooting. Authorities were searching the mall for any other victims, but they believed the shooting was contained to the food court, Ison said.
Police had confiscated a suspicious backpack that was in a bathroom near the food court, he told a news conference.
Indianapolis metropolitan police and multiple other agencies are assisting in the investigation.
“We are sickened by yet another type of incident like this in our country,” the Indianapolis assistant chief of police, Chris Bailey, said. There was no active threat to the area, he said.
Greenwood is a south suburb of Indianapolis with a population of about 60,000.
The mayor, Mark Myers, asked for “prayers to the victims and our first responders”, saying in a statement: “This tragedy hits at the core of our community.”
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