Despite President Joe Biden's recent signing of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, mass shootings continue to be a major problem in the United States. Now, just weeks after the Highland Park shooting on the Fourth of July in Chicago, another mass shooting has taken place in Greenwood, Indiana. Fortunately, the incident was thwarted before the shooter was able to cause large-scale carnage.
According to Complex, an as-of-yet unidentified gunman opened gunfire at Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana on Sunday evening, letting off a reported 20 gunshots that resulted in the death of three civilians and the injury of two others. However, before police were able to take control of the situation, an armed bystander — who has only been identified as a 22-year-old male from Bartholomew County— reportedly took matters into their own hands and fatally shot the gunman.
Greenwood's Police Chief, Jim Ison, told reporters that police started to get calls about an active adult male shooter around 6 p.m. after the shooter had allegedly entered Greenwood Park Mall with a rifle and several magazines of ammunition. While a potential motive for the shooting has not yet been revealed, Chief Ison did speak on the armed civilian who helped prevent an even more unfathomable tragedy.
"It appears that a good Samaritan that was armed observed the shooting in progress and shot the shooter," Chief Jim Ison said.
More details will likely start pouring in over the coming hours, but according to CNN, this situation should be recognized for the extremely rare occurrence in which an armed bystander actually attacked an active shooter. In fact, a data analysis by the New York Times revealed that of 433 active shooter cases in the United States between 2000 and 2021, only 22 of them were ended by an armed bystander, and in 10 of those cases, the "good Samaritan" just so happened to be an off-duty police officer.
Stay tuned for more details on the Greenwood Park Mall shooting.