Three dead in U.S. mall shooting: gunman shot by armed bystander who stopped the attack

Three people were killed and two others wounded Sunday by a person who opened fire in a shopping mall in the U.S. state of Indiana, officials said.

 

We witnessed a mass shooting tonight at the Greenwood Park Mall, Mark Myers, the mayor of Greenwood, Indiana, said in a statement. The city is located about 10 miles south of downtown Indianapolis, the state capital. Myers said the shooter was shot by an individual with a gun.

 

Greenwood police posted a message on their Facebook page asking witnesses to the shooting to contact them with information. The gunman, who has not been identified, entered the mall's food court at about 6 p.m. (2200 GMT) with a rifle and several magazines of ammunition and opened fire, Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison said.

 

Among the injured was a 12-year-old girl, Ison said, adding that no motive had been established. Four deaths have been confirmed, he added, noting that the original shooter was among those killed.

 

Jim Ison praised the intervention of the armed bystander who stopped the attack, calling the 22-year-old man a good Samaritan. The real hero of the day is the citizen who was legally carrying a gun in that food court and was able to stop the shooter almost as soon as he started, he said.

 

It shook us to our core. It's not something we've seen in Greenwood before, he added. It's absolutely horrible. 

 

It is the latest attack in a wave of gun violence in the United States, where about 40,000 deaths a year are caused by guns, according to the Gun Violence Archive. It comes two weeks after a gunman opened fire at a Fourth of July parade in an upscale Chicago suburb, killing seven people and injuring at least 30. The attack follows two killings in May, in which ten African Americans were shot at a supermarket in upstate New York, and 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Texas.

 

The recent outbreak of gun violence has reignited the debate over gun regulation. A U.S. House of Representatives committee is scheduled to consider a bill this week to ban assault weapons for the first time in nearly 20 years. A 10-year federal ban on assault weapons expired in 2004.