Armed Citizen Ends Shooting, Kills Bad Guy at Walmart
Russ Chastain 06.20.18
An armed citizen put a swift end to a violent spree at a Washington state Walmart, according to the Washington Post.
A gunman who opened fire inside a Walmart in Washington state and injured at least two people during carjacking attempts was fatally shot by one of two armed civilians on Sunday evening, according to police.
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About 5 p.m. Pacific Time, authorities received a call about a possibly drunk driver heading the wrong way on a main road near a local high school, said Laura Wohl, Tumwater police public information officer.
As police sped to the scene, they received a second call about a carjacking with shots fired. When officers arrived, they found a 16-year-old girl with unspecified non-life-threatening injuries but no suspect. They quickly located the stolen car but once again no suspect.
At about 5:30 p.m., they started getting numerous calls of shots fired in and around a nearby Walmart. Wohl said they later confirmed that the man doing the shooting was the same person involved in the carjacking.
The vague account of events says the bad guy “entered the Walmart, fired shots at a display case and then went into the parking lot.” He shot someone at least two times in an attempt to steal his or her vehicle, then tried to carjack a different vehicle.
It was then that good guys with guns stepped in.
At that point, Wohl said, two armed civilians in the parking lot confronted the suspect, one of whom fatally shot the man.
Police did not identify anyone involved or the type of weapons used, except to say they were handguns. The victim of the second carjacking attempt was in critical condition at Harborview Hospital.
False reports that this was a “mass casualty” incident apparently resulted from panicked accounts from shoppers inside the Walmart store.
Kailani Bailey told the Tacoma News Tribune she was shopping inside the grocery section of the Walmart when a tall man in a T-shirt and jeans ran in and shoved people out of the way, ordering them to “move, move.” Then she heard a popping sound from the other side of the store and someone yelling ‘run, run.’ When she got outside, she said, she heard more shots.
Caitlyn Wallner told the paper a similar story. She heard ‘pop, pop, pop,” and a man yelling ‘there’s a guy shooting. Everybody run.’
‘There were all kinds of people running out,’ Robert Berwick, who was in the back of the store, told the Seattle Times. Darren Gossler told the News Tribune he saw a man with what appeared to be a handgun.
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Witness Brian Adams told KING5 TV that “this guy was randomly firing” both inside and outside the store. He said he heard about 15 shots.
Imagine how much more havoc this guy could have wreaked if he hadn’t been stopped by an armed citizen willing to risk his own death in order to do so.
‘He is a hero,’ Adams told KING 5. ‘If this customer hadn’t done what he did, who knows what would have happened.’
Good guys with guns. Gotta love ’em.
