Man who killed 3 at Indiana mall told ex he would "take others with him" if he died
The ex-girlfriend of a 20-year-old man who fatally shot three people and wounded two more at an Indianapolis-area mall said he told her that he didn't expect to make it to 21 and that if he killed himself, he would "take others" with him, police said Wednesday.
Jonathan Douglas Sapirman also had a fascination with Nazi Germany, according to the girlfriend, who was interviewed after the July 17 shooting at the Greenwood Park Mall. But while the three slain victims were Hispanic, there was no indication the shooting was racially motivated, according to Greenwood Police Chief James Ison, who said authorities have not determined a specific motive for the attack.
Ison said there were no red flags raised that could have tipped off authorities about the killings beforehand. The shooter, who was shot and killed by an armed shopper shortly after opening fire, posted more than 700 comments on social media about mass killers between 2017 and this year, but never indicated he was planning to carry out such an attack, Ison said at a news conference.
"On the contrary, almost every post was more of a discussion or debate concerning other high-profile mass killings around the country," the police chief said. He said the shooter "acknowledged several times in these comments that he studied and researched mass killings and serial killers."
"It seemed that he enjoyed debating" such events with other users, Ison said.
The FBI was able to revive the gunman's cellphone, which he dropped into a mall toilet before the shooting, but have not yet been able to determine its password. With about 1 million possibilities available, that ongoing process could take years, Ison said. Data on the shooter's laptop was completely destroyed after he placed it in an oven with a butane tank, authorities reiterated Wednesday.
Sapirman opened fire at the mall around closing time, killing married couple Pedro Pineda, 56, and Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda, 37; and Victor Gomez, 30, all from Indianapolis. A woman was shot in the leg and a 12-year-old girl was hit by shrapnel, police have said.
Footage taken from surveillance cameras at the Greenwood Park Mall showed the gunman entering the building about an hour before the deadly shooting took place. He remained inside a bathroom on the premises during that time, according to authorities.
Still images from the surveillance cameras were released by the Greenwood Police Department this week, and in them, Shapiro is seen walking through the mall entrance doors wearing what appears to be a baseball cap and carrying a large backpack. CBS affiliate WFOR-TV's Max Lewis shared the images on Twitter on Wednesday.
An armed bystander — 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, a Seymour, Indiana, man who had been at the mall shopping with his girlfriend — fatally shot the gunman shortly after he started shooting.
Ison has said Dicken's quick action was "nothing short of heroic." Authorities have said Dicken was legally armed.
Although police originally gave a timeline that indicated two minutes had passed before Dicken was able to stop the gunman, they later amended their statements to clarify that it took the bystander just 15 seconds to neutralize him.
"The time lapse between the moment that Jonathan Sapirman exited the restroom and began shooting, and when he was shot by the civilian (Elisjsha Dicken) was only fifteen seconds, not two minutes," Greenwood Police Chief James Ison said in a statement about the timeline last July. "The surveillance video shows Sapirman exit the restroom at 5:56:48pm. He was neutralized by Dicken at 5:57:03 pm."
