(RightIsRight.co) – An armed “Good Samaritan,” who prevented what may have been a real carnage in a shopping mall in Indiana earlier this week, took only 15 seconds to “neutralize” the man going on a shooting spree, the local police have revealed.
A heavily armed suspect opened fire in the Greenwood Park Mall food court in Greenwood, Indiana. He was later identified as Jonathan Douglas Sapirman.
Even though he managed to shoot five people, three of them fatally, a mere 15 seconds after the start of the attack, Sapirman was himself gunned down.
It was 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, a legally armed man and a native of Seymour, Indiana, who reacted immediately, thus saving countless lives, Fox News reported.
The Indiana police also revealed that eight of ten rounds fired by the Good Samaritan hit the target. The gunman had two rifles, a Glock pistol, and no fewer than 100 rounds.
Chief James Ison of the Greenwood Police said in a statement that Eli Dicken didn’t take two minutes to kill the rampaging gunman but precisely 15 seconds, as evidenced by the available CCTV footage.
“The time lapse between the moment that Jonathan Sapirman exited the restroom and began shooting, and when he was shot by the civilian was only fifteen seconds, not two minutes,” the police chief said.
“The surveillance video shows Sapirman exit the restroom at 5:56:48pm. He was neutralized by Dicken at 5:57:03 pm,” he added.
Ison thus corrected an earlier report by Indiana law enforcement that had said that the entire shooting incident lasted for two minutes.
He noted the conclusion from Sapirman’s autopsy showing the armed bystander who took action missed the attacker only twice, even as the latter was shooting from a distance.
It is plausible that Dicken could’ve shot the gunman even faster, but he acted quickly and cautiously as he waved for others to get behind him so as not to hit any bystanders.
“Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen who took action within the first two minutes of this shooting,” Police Chief Ison said.
He also praised Dicken’s “heroic” actions as “very tactically sound” even though the young man had never had any military or police experience.
