Twin Falls In-N-Out shooting leaves three dead

An off-duty state trooper and an armed bystander returned fire at a gunman who attacked a newly opened In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho, actions police said may have prevented more deaths in a shooting that killed three people and injured seven others.

Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks said Sunday that investigators believe 24-year-old Chad Williams carried out the Saturday afternoon attack alone before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Detectives were still investigating the motive and the full circumstances of the shooting, which unfolded around 2 p.m. at the restaurant in a busy shopping plaza where hundreds of people were nearby.

“We believe their actions helped drive the suspect away from the scene, preventing further casualties,” Hicks said of the off-duty trooper and armed citizen, whose names have not been released. “We want to take a moment and commend the actions of the off-duty officer and the citizen, and their heroic action to stop this incident.”

Officials said two of the wounded had been treated and released from the hospital by Sunday, three remained in stable condition and two were in critical condition. Authorities had not released the names of those killed because relatives were still being notified.

Lane Koehn, 34, told NBC News he was stopped at a traffic light outside the restaurant when he saw a person with an AR-style rifle emerge from the drive-thru. Bullets hit a car in front of him, and Koehn said he watched the shooter move through the drive-thru toward his vehicle as someone in the line fired back with a handgun.

“I could tell he was trying to figure out where to go, and somebody in the drive-thru line with a handgun was shooting at him,” Koehn said. He described the shooter as “panicked,” looking around and moving “kind of erratically.”

“The shooter was solely focused on him, and [it] allowed us to get out,” Koehn said. “I mean, the car directly ahead of me was getting shot — it gave them time to leave.”

Koehn said he later saw an In-N-Out employee dragging a wounded co-worker across a parking lot. “He was just screaming and screaming her name, telling her, ‘Wake up.’… She was in and out of it,” he said. A retired EMT nearby helped until an ambulance arrived.

In-N-Out owner and President Lynsi Snyder confirmed that one of the people killed was an employee. “My heart is broken, my chest is heavy, my eyes burn from the tears I’ve shed. We lost one of our beautiful Associates tonight,” Snyder said in a statement posted on social media. In a separate statement, she said the worker “was taking care of our most important asset — our customers, and her life was taken by a disgusting human who doesn’t value the lives of others or his own.”

Witnesses described panic as gunfire erupted. Haley Dodaro, 43, said she and her mother were waiting in the drive-thru when they saw people running and workers fleeing the restaurant. “So that’s when we knew there was a shooting. People were running out crying and screaming. It was very scary,” she told The Associated Press.

Nayeli Rodriguez, 40, of Burley, told The Associated Press she was inside with her daughters waiting for food when she heard shots from the kitchen. An employee told customers to get down, and Rodriguez said an older man tried to shield her and her daughters before they ran outside. “We were trying to get as far as we could and some angels let us in their car,” she said.

Hicks said Williams’ family was cooperating with investigators. “Their hearts are also broken during this time,” he said. The police chief also pushed back against false online claims identifying another person as the gunman, saying that individual had “no involvement in this incident whatsoever.”

Minutes after officers arrived, there was an officer-involved shooting, but no one was injured, Hicks said. The Twin Falls police officer who fired is being reviewed.

The FBI has opened a digital tip line for the public to submit photos, videos and audio recordings from the shooting. Twin Falls police said they were receiving assistance from several local and state agencies and that law enforcement services remained available to the community.