(WASHINGTON) — A man was arrested after allegedly attempting to access a roadway closed off for first lady Jill Biden’s motorcade, according to the United States Secret Service.
The man was charged with assault on police, failure to obey, crossing a police line and resisting arrest, officials said.
“A man was arrested near the White House after attempting to access a roadway that was temporarily closed due to a protectee motorcade,” the Secret Service told ABC News. “The individual struggled with uniform division officers and was ultimately placed into custody. Two officers were sent to an area hospital for evaluation following the minor physical confrontation.”
The first lady’s office declined to comment on Tuesday.
(UVALDE, Texas) — Emotions reached a roiling boiling point Monday during an open forum hosted by the school board in Uvalde, Texas, just one day after a 77-page report by a joint committee of the Texas Legislature slammed the police response to the incident and the school district’s lack of preparation for such an attack.
A special public forum held by the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Board to allow community members to ask questions and voice concerns about the changes and updates for the 2022-2023 school year — including safety and security plans — quickly became a tinder box of emotion and anger.
Community members resoundingly said they want former Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo — currently on paid administrative leave — fired immediately. As the May 24 massacre unfolded, Arredondo allegedly failed to take on the role of incident commander or transfer the responsibility to another officer on scene, despite it being an “essential duty” he had assigned himself in the active shooter plan he helped write, the committee said.
Many called for members of Uvalde’s school district police force who were present during the shooting to be fired, for an independent investigation into the Robb Elementary School failures, and for answers and transparency about their specific concerns following the report.
On Monday night, parents threatened to pull their kids from Uvalde schools come September, and several also called for Uvalde CISD Superintendent Dr. Hal Harrell to resign.
The community also wanted answers on what was known about the Robb Elementary School door being locked or not.
“In violation of school policy, no one had locked any of the three exterior doors to the west building of Robb Elementary. As a result, the attacker had unimpeded access to enter,” the committee reported.
The committee also faulted the school district for failing to treat the maintenance of doors with known faulty locks with “appropriate urgency.”
Speakers at the forum also called for an independent investigation into the massacre. The group was united, calling several times to stand up together — to be courageous and voice their truth.
After apologizing in his introduction for not having held a forum like this sooner, Harrell, sitting on stage alongside the full school board, opened the floor to questions.
“First of all, I just want to say last time y’all had us on a time limit of sorts, and that’s not going to fly today,” said Brett Cross, the uncle of Uziyah Garcia. “There’s no other way to put it. We have a lot to say, and we won’t be silenced and we won’t be stopped. So if y’all had the idea of a time limit, it’s not going to get followed this time.”
Cross was referencing a press conference held by the special committee report Sunday on the failed police response to the shooting that saw 19 children and two teachers killed. Families were invited to attend and ask questions Sunday, and those invited — including the media and families — had to fill out compulsory paperwork required by the committee to ask a question. Many members of the community did, but due to time constraints, they were not given the opportunity to ask their questions.
Before the forum began Monday, attendees from the community sporting “Uvalde Strong” matching shirts placed photos of the victims on the seats in the front row facing the school board members.
When later asked by Cross if Arredondo was going to be fired, Harrell said, “That will be a decision… We will take the report into consideration, it will be a closed session.”
“I’ll tell you this: If he’s not fired by noon tomorrow, then I want your resignation and every single one of you board members,” Cross responded.
Vincente Salazar, the grandfather of Layla Salazar, addressed the school board saying, “Your system failed these families” and “it didn’t save our children. Your closed sessions that… didn’t save our children.”
“What we need to do now is put families in your sessions so we know what’s going on, what’s going on. And the way you’re spending your money for the security of our children,” Salazar continued. “We pay over 40% of the city budget for the school and for the police, and you hired trash. That’s not right.”
“I lost a loved one right here. My only granddaughter, I can hold myself together now because I’ve done my crime. Now it’s time to do my fighting. And you have seen me in the papers and you will see me in the papers a lot more. Because this isn’t the end. This is just the beginning of a war that you guys created for our children,” he added, to cheers from community members in the crowd.
(UVALDE, Texas) — Members of a special committee of the Texas state legislature met with family members of the victims on Sunday to present their findings.
A scathing 77-page report by a joint committee of the Texas Legislature contained new details of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and slammed the police response to the incident and the school district’s lack of preparation for such an attack.
The report, which was made public Sunday after the committee reviewed it with many of the loved ones of the 19 students and two teachers killed in the May 24 shooting, detailed a number of major lapses in measures to fortify the school from intruders and the slow manner in which multiple law enforcement agencies mobilized to confront the heavily armed gunman.
While the committee said it found no “villains” other than the gunman to blame for the deadly attack, it found “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” that prevented a speedy response to the rampage.
Here are five key takeaways from the committee’s investigation of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.
School was unprepared
In the report’s opening pages, the committee cited the lack of preparation by the school district and the Robb Elementary staff to prevent an active shooter from getting onto the campus and into the school building.
“With hindsight, we can say Robb Elementary did not adequately prepare for the risk of an armed intruder on campus,” the committee wrote.
The panel said the school’s 5-foot-tall exterior fence, which surveillance video showed the gunman easily climbing to get onto the campus, was “in adequate to meaningfully impede an intruder.”
More importantly, the committee found that while the school had adopted security policies to ensure exterior doors and internal classroom door were locked while school was in session, those protocols were mostly ignored.
“There was a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks,” the committee said.
Such behavior, according to the committee, was “tacitly condoned” by the school administrators.
“In fact, the school actually suggested circumventing the locks as a solution for the convenience of substitute teachers and others who lacked their own key,” the committee wrote.
School staff knew doors were unlocked
The gunman entered the school through a door on the west side of the campus that didn’t latch properly after a teacher had propped it open with a rock to bring in food from her car, investigators said.
“In violation of school policy, no one had locked any of the three exterior doors to the west building of Robb Elementary. As a result, the attacker had unimpeded access to enter,” the committee reported.
The committee also faulted the school district for failing to treat the maintenance of doors with known faulty locks with “appropriate urgency.”
“In particular, staff and students widely knew the door to one of the victimized classrooms, Room 111, was ordinarily unsecured and accessible,” according to the committee’s report. “Room 111 could be locked, but an extra effort was required to make sure the latch engaged,” the report said.
No incident commander at the scene
The committee found numerous “shortcomings and failures of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and of various agencies and officers of law enforcement” in the response to the shooting. Chief of among them was that there was no designated incident commander at the scene as the massacre was unfolding.
“At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving lives of innocent victims over their own safety,” the committee reported.
UCISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo and the commander of the Uvalde Police Department’s SWAT team were among the first wave of law enforcement officers to arrive at the school. However, neither of them assumed the role of incident commander to coordinate the 376 law enforcement officers from local, state and federal agencies who quickly responded to the shooting, the committee said.
“The Uvalde CISD’s written active shooter plan directed its police chief to assume command and control the response to an active shooter,” according to the report.
But as the massacre unfolded, Arredondo allegedly failed to take on the role of incident commander or transfer the responsibility to another officer on scene, despite it being an “essential duty” he had assigned himself in the active shooter plan he helped write, the committee said.
“Yet it was not effectively performed by anyone,” the committee wrote. “The void of leadership could have contributed to the loss of life as injured victims waited for over an hour for help, and the attacker continued to sporadically fire his weapon.”
It took 73 minutes between the time the suspect entered the school to when officers breached the door of the classroom and killed him, according to the report.
Lack of communication
The committee found that by simply setting up a command post, which was not done, the chaos of the moment could have been transformed into order by the incident commander assigning tasks and aiding in the flow of information that could have been used to “inform critical decisions,” according to the report.
“Notably, nobody ensured that responders making key decisions inside the building received information that students and teachers had survived the initial burst of gunfire, were trapped in Rooms 111 and 112, and had called out for help,” the committee wrote. “Some responders outside and inside the building knew that information through radio communications. But nobody in command analyzed this information to recognize that the attacker was preventing critically injured victims from obtaining medical care.”
Arredondo, however, erroneously believed the shooter was barricaded and that responding officers had time on their side to deal with the situation.
“Instead of continuing to act as if they were addressing a barricaded subject scenario in which responders had time on their side, they should have reassessed the scenario as one involving an active shooter,” the committee wrote. “Correcting this error should have sparked greater urgency to immediately breach the classroom by any possible means, to subdue the attacker, and to deliver immediate aid to surviving victims.”
The report also said of the hundreds of first responders who quickly arrived on the scene, many were better trained and better equipped than the school district police, “yet in this crisis, no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post.”
“Despite an obvious atmosphere of chaos, the ranking officers of other responding agencies, did not approach the Uvalde CISD chief of police or anyone else perceived to be in command to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or offer that specific assistance,” the report states.
“The entirety of law enforcement and its training, preparation, and response shares systemic responsibility for many missed opportunities on that tragic day,” the report said.
The attacker’s motive
For the first time since the massacre occurred, information on a possible motive was included in the report.
“One motive that drove the man behind the massacre at Robb Elementary School was a desire for notoriety and fame,” the committee stated in its report, refusing to use his name.
The committee delved into the suspect’s background, finding he had been a good student up to the eighth grade. He then quickly took a dark path and became a serial truant that eventually got him kicked out of school in the ninth grade, according to the report.
The suspect attended school at Robb Elementary up to the fourth grade.
“The shooting took place in his former fourth grade classroom, and he discussed bad memories of fourth grade with an acquaintance just weeks beforehand,” the committee reported.
The suspect’s fourth grade teacher testified before the committee, acknowledging she knew he needed extra help in her class because “he claimed to be a victim of bullying.”
The suspect’s ex-girlfriend told the committee they broke up in mid-2021 and she described him as “lonely and depressed, constantly teased by friends who called him a ‘school shooter.'” She said he also claimed that he was sexually assaulted as a child.
“She said that he told her repeatedly that he wouldn’t live past eighteen, either because he would commit suicide or simply because he ‘wouldn’t live long,'” the report states.
On social media platforms, he expressed an interest in gore and violence, sharing videos online of beheadings and horrific accidents, and sending explicit messages to other online users, the report said.
“Finally, the attacker developed a fascination with school shootings, of which he made no secret,” according to the report.
The committee also heard testimony that the suspect told acquaintances he was hoarding money for “something big” and that they would all see him on the news one day, according to the report.
None of his statements were ever reported to authorities, the committee found.
The committee wrote that the suspect began to formulate his plan to attack the school in early 2022 after he got into a “blowout argument” with his mother that he livestreamed on Instagram.
Investigators believe the suspect began stockpiling firearm accessories, including 60- and 30-round magazines, holographic weapon sights and snap-on trigger systems in February 2020. He legally purchased ammunition and guns, including two AR-15 rifles, when he turned 18 in May, according to the report.
The committee included in the report an incident that occurred at Robb Elementary School on March 23, in which a suspicious person dressed in black and with a backpack was seen canvassing the school. The person was never identified, according to the committee.
(SALT LAKE CITY) — The Great Salt Lake has lost two-thirds of its size due to rising temperatures and scientists say this is already causing a dangerous ecological ripple effect throughout Utah.
The water body, which is approximately 75 miles long and 30 miles wide, is known to be the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and feeds into nearby rivers, but it’s now one-third its usual size and still shrinking.
Ecologists who have been watching this climate change-induced trend told ABC News that the dry-up is already affecting Utah’s fauna, flora and human populations, and the problem is only going to get worse without outside help.
“I don’t know how much time we have,” Joel Ferry, the director of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources, told ABC News.
More than 800 square miles of the river have been exposed due to the dry-up, according to experts. Ferry, a fifth-generation rancher and state representative, said he has personally been affected by the drought.
Ferry’s land is on the Bear River, which is the largest tributary to the Great Salt Lake, and normally the river flows enough water to rise lake levels up to 3 feet during the peak of the season.
This year the water only went up 1 foot, which is problematic because the water levels usually drop 2 feet during the end of the season, according to Ferry.
“The problem is a shallow lake. There are not many more feet to go,” he said.
Kyle Stone, a wildlife biologist for the state of Utah, told ABC News that animals and plants near the lake are already bearing the burden of the dry-up.
As the water goes down, its salinity goes up which kills algae, a food source for brine shrimp, he said. The shrimp is food to more than 10 million birds that depend on the lake during migrations, according to Stone.
“They’ve got to get from central Canada to central Argentina or southern Mexico without a stopover point,” Stone told ABC News. “You just can’t do it. You’ve gotta refuel somewhere.”
Birds that do stop in the area are now prone to attacks from coyotes or other predators who have more land to traverse, according to Stone.
Robert Gillies, a climatologist from Utah State University, told ABC News that the dry-up also affects people, even those who don’t live near the water.
When the lake dries up harmful particulates that are at the bottom of the lake, both ones that occur naturally and ones that formed from decades of mining in the area, are exposed and kicked up in the wind, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
Gillies said arsenic is the most troubling particulate that gets airborne, particularly in the wintertime. During colder weather, particles are trapped in an inversion and, during winter storms, they are released into the air, he said.
Gillies warned that this can be harmful to people’s cardiovascular and respiratory systems.
“If you have been compromised on any of those fronts, it’s just going to be worse,” he said.
Some Utah residents are taking some efforts to mitigate the damage.
Ferry has guided farmers to install drip irrigation systems into their soil. The system pushes water in a small row directly to the plants, he said.
“So it’s a really good practice for things like lettuce and tomatoes, pumpkins, those kinds of plants,” he said.
The Utah state legislature also passed a $40 million plan earlier this year to create a water trust to maintain and improve waterflow to the lake and U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-UT, introduced the Great Salt Lake Recovery Act, which would “study historic drought conditions and protect the long-term health.”
Ferry said more work needs to be done and said the federal and state governments need to make more years of investments to prevent the problem from getting worse.
“Without managing our water appropriately, life in the West doesn’t exist,” he said.
(GREENWOOD, Ind.) — Police identified and applauded the 22-year-old who shot and killed a gunman who opened fire on a Greenwood, Indiana, shopping mall.
The gunman, who killed three people before being killed, was identified Monday as 20-year-old Jonathan Sapirman.
Elisjsha Dicken shot and killed Sapirman two minutes after the rampage started, Greenwood Police Chief James Ison said at Monday’s news conference.
“Our city, our community and our state is grateful for his heroism in this situation,” Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers said. “He’s a young man processing a lot. I ask that you give him space and time to be able to process what he’s gone through last night.”
The Johnson County coroner also identified the three people who were killed in the shooting: 30-year-old Victor Gomez and married couple Pedro Pineda, 56, and Rosa Rivera de Pineda, 37.
“I am 100% certain many, many more people would’ve died last night if it was not for his heroism,” Ison told ABC News. “The young man had his wits about him, acted very quickly.”
The suspect had over 100 rounds of ammunition on him, but fired just 24 bullets before being shot by Dicken, police said.
The suspect brought three guns with him to the mall, but only used a Sig Sauer M400 rifle, which he purchased legally in March. Sapirman allegedly left behind another semi-automatic rifle in the mall bathroom, where he was seen on surveillance footage for an hour before the shooting. He purchased that weapon legally in March 2021. A pistol was also found on his body, police said.
Gomez was shot outside the restroom, while the Pinedas were shot while eating dinner in the food court, according to police.
In addition to those who were killed, a 22-year-old woman was shot in the leg and a 12-year-old girl suffered a minor wound after a bullet fragment ricocheted off the wall and hit her in the back.
ABC News’ Alex Perez and Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.
(OXFORD, Miss.) — The search continues for 20-year-old Ole Miss student Jimmie “Jay” Lee, who has now been missing for 10 days.
Lee was last seen on the morning of July 8 after leaving the Campus Walk Apartments dressed in “a silver robe or housecoat, gold cap, and gray slippers,” according to authorities.
Three days later, Lee’s vehicle was found at a local towing company after it was removed from the Molly Barr Trails Apartment complex, where he was believed to be visiting someone, according to Oxford, Mississippi, police.
Lee’s family, meanwhile, is desperate for answers as the search drags on without success.
“We’re just holding in strength with faith the size of a mustard seed. That’s all we’re holding onto — that faith in that strength and staying strong. Not only for ourselves, but we’re staying strong for Jay Lee,” Lee’s sister, Tayla Carey, told Meridian, Mississippi ABC affiliate WTOK.
Lee’s father spoke out in a Facebook video on July 13 urging anyone with any new information to reach out to authorities.
“I’m asking that if anyone knows anything, or sees anything, say something,” Lee’s father, Jimmie Lee Sr., said.
Lee’s father described Lee as a hard worker and said his son was working to increase access to baby formula during the current nationwide shortage.
“My son, he’s currently working on an effort to provide infant formula for children that didn’t have it available to them,” Lee’s father said. “It doesn’t matter who you are, he was there to help if he saw the need.”
The Oxford, Mississippi, and University of Mississippi police departments are currently collaborating on the investigation to search for Lee.
“The departments are utilizing all available resources to track tips, potential witnesses, speaking with friends, running search warrants, canvassing areas, and collecting evidence,” the police departments said in a press release.
Crimestoppers has pledged $1,000 to anyone who brings forward information that leads to Lee being found.
The two police departments said on Thursday that “over a dozen search warrants have been executed on both physical and digital entities.”
Lee’s vehicle is now in the Mississippi State Crime Laboratory for processing, police said, but authorities and the Lee family continue to emphasize the need for more information to help locate Lee.
“This is my plea that you help find my child,” Lee’s father said.
(DALLAS) — Residents in Texas are being asked to conserve water as drought conditions and a looming heat wave pose a potential shortage in the region’s water supply.
The North Texas Municipal Water District has called for customers to reduce their water use “immediately,” especially for outdoor water use, according to an alert released Saturday.
The utility company, which serves about 2 million people in northern Texas, including the city of Plano and North Dallas County, was forced to cease water production at one of its four treatment plants unexpectedly on Saturday to perform critical maintenance “to return the plant back to full water purification capacity,” according to the alert.
That maintenance, combined with regional drought and “increasing discretionary outdoor use and irrigation,” is what prompted the utility company to request a precautionary reduction in water usage until at least Wednesday.
The majority of Texas is currently experiencing drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Cities like Plano and Dallas are experiencing moderate to severe drought, a map showing drought conditions across the state released Thursday shows.
The request for conservation comes as temperatures reach all-time highs in parts of the U.S. and Europe. The Dallas and Fort Worth areas are expected to reach up to 110 degrees from Monday through Wednesday, forecasts show.
But even as the triple-digit temperatures move east, hot conditions and the continuation of the current drought are expected to remain for the rest of the summer, according to the utility company.
The critical maintenance will involve taking particles out of the water in six sedimentation basins used to treat the water and produce up to 210 million gallons per day, according to the utility company.
“We’re seeing a stress on our system because of peak demands with peak weather conditions,” NTMWD Director of Communications Wayne Larson told ABC Dallas affiliate WFAA.
Larson continued, “We are enduring a long, hot, dry summer. The forecast doesn’t seem like it will change. We are trying to manage and meet the rising peak demands of our customers.”
Water is not the only utility service in the state facing pressure due to current climate conditions.
Last week, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas called for Texans to voluntarily conserve electricity amid a surge of energy demands due to the scorching temperatures. Despite the heat, cloud cover at some points is limiting the state’s access to essential solar-generated polar.
The pressure on the state’s power grid is a continuation of weather-related incidents that occurred in 2021, including the Texas freeze in February 2021 that left millions in the dark and a similar request by ERCOT in June 2021 following tight grid conditions and a significant number of forced outages due to heat waves in the region.
Water supplies in the western U.S. are beginning to dwindle as a decades-long megadrought continues to dry up some of the most important water sources, including the Colorado River as well as Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest reservoirs in the country.
As the commodity becomes more precious, customers could soon see an uptick in their water bills, according to experts.
(SAN DIEGO) — Indoor mask mandates returned Monday for the San Diego Unified School District schools and offices as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations tick up in the county.
Mandatory masking in indoor public spaces will be required for all students, teachers and staff at least through the end of summer school.
“As a district, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been intentional in implementing strategies to keep our community safe and reduce absences due to illness — all in service of our students, staff and community,” the district said in a letter sent to staff, parents and students Friday.
“If your student is participating in summer school or other summer enrichment program, please send them to school or their program with a mask. If they do not have one, masks will be provided. Students and staff will be required to wear their masks while indoors only,” the letter said.
The district added in the letter it will continue to monitor data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the county over the next two weeks and let the community know if there are any changes.
SDUSD dropped its mask mandate in April following a decrease in COVID-19 cases, hospitalization and deaths. However, in May, the district said the mandate would return as long as the county was classified by the CDC as having high transmission levels of COVID, which is determined by case counts and hospital admissions.
Over the last seven days, San Diego has recorded 383.01 new cases per 100,000, a nearly 5% jump from the previous week, according to CDC data. Additionally, the county has seen a hospital admission rate of 11.8 per 100,000 over the last seven days, which is a 31% spike compared to the previous seven days.
The district has not stated whether the indoor mask mandate will continue into the fall semester. District officials did not immediately return ABC News’ request for comment.
Schools in San Diego are not the only locations seeing the return of masks. Naval Base Coronado and Naval Base San Diego both announced on social media that mask mandates will go into effect Monday.
“Effective TODAY, mask wearing is required indoors on all Naval Base Coronado Installations and training sites until further notice,” the base wrote in a Facebook post. “Please do your part to reduce the spread by wearing a mask, maintaining social distancing, increased hygiene practices and vaccinations.”
(NEW YORK) — A jury will soon determine if confessed Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz will be sentenced to death.
Opening arguments begin Monday in the penalty phase of Cruz’s trial. The trial is expected to take several months. At the conclusion, the jury’s decision must be unanimous to sentence him to death.
On Feb. 14, 2018, Cruz, then 19, gunned down 14 students and three staff members at his former school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in South Florida. He was taken into custody that day.
Cruz pleaded guilty in October 2021 to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder.
Cruz said in court last year, “I am very sorry for what I did and I have to live with it every day. … It brings me nightmares and I can’t live with myself sometimes.”
Cruz, the deadliest mass shooter to go before a jury, said in court he believes the victims’ families should be the ones to decide whether he gets the death penalty.
Cameron Kasky, a Parkland student in 2018 and now a gun-reform activist, called the death penalty “barbaric” in a tweet Sunday.
The death penalty “will not bring any of the victims back” and will “create a false sense of Justice, which will only come when the gun manufacturers and the politicians who support them are held accountable,” Kasky wrote.
The “shooter does not deserve to live, but the U.S. government and our ‘justice’ system is incapable of responsibly wielding the power to determine value in life,” he wrote. “It’s the politicians who support the gun lobby that should be held accountable.”
Manuel Oliver, whose 17-year-old son Joaquin died in Parkland, told Miami ABC affiliate WPLG, “I think he should die and I think that is not enough. … Not even the death penalty is enough.”
Fred Guttenberg, who has been fighting for gun reform since his 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in Parkland, tweeted Monday, “One week ago today I was at the @WhiteHouse to celebrate @POTUS signing gun safety legislation. Today, I am at the Courthouse for the start of the penalty phase of the criminal trial of the person who murdered my daughter with an AR 15. This is the reality of gun violence.”
“Jaime, I miss you beyond words,” he added in another tweet.
Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex was killed, tweeted Monday morning, “I love you Alex.”
(INDIANAPOLIS) — At least three people were killed and two others were injured in a shooting at an Indianapolis-area shopping mall on Sunday evening, police said.
Multiple people called 911 at around 6:05 p.m. local time to report an active shooter at the Greenwood Park Mall in Greenwood, Indiana, some 14 miles south of Indianapolis. An unidentified gunman had walked into the mall’s food court and opened fire, according to Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison.
Olivia Harding said she was at the Old Navy in the mall with her mom when they heard four gunshots and initially thought the nearby carousel was breaking down. But then they heard six more shots.
“I told my mom instantly to get down,” Harding recalled in an interview with ABC News on Sunday night.
A person who was lawfully armed — identified as a 22-year-old man from Bartholomew County — shot and killed the gunman, according to Ison.
“The real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court and was able to stop that shooter almost as soon as he began,” Ison told reporters during a press conference on Sunday night.
Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers also confirmed that the suspect was “shot by an armed individual,” whom he called a “good Samaritan.”
“This person saved lives tonight,” Myers said in a statement late Sunday. “On behalf of the City of Greenwood, I am grateful for his quick action and heroism in this situation.”
The victims include four females and one male. Among the injured is a 12-year-old girl whose parents brought her to the hospital with minor injuries after the shooting. The second injured victim was hospitalized and in stable condition as of Sunday evening, according to the police chief.
The suspect, who appears to have used a long-gun rifle with several magazines of ammunition, has not yet been identified, nor has a motive been determined, Ison said.
While the deadly shooting remains under investigation, Ison said there is currently no ongoing threat and SWAT teams have cleared the mall.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said Indiana State Police are assisting local authorities in the incident.
“Lives were lost today, and I’m thinking about all the victims of this horrible incident, now and in the days and weeks to come,” Holcomb said in a statement via Twitter late Sunday.
ABC News’ Ebony Peeples and Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.
