Police in Twin Falls, Idaho, have identified 24-year-old Chad Williams as the gunman who opened fire at a newly opened In-N-Out Burger location Saturday afternoon, killing three people and injuring seven others before turning the gun on himself.
Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks said at a Sunday news conference that 911 calls reporting shots fired began coming in around 2:29 p.m. Saturday at the restaurant on Blue Lakes Boulevard, which had opened just a week earlier, on July 24. Dispatchers could hear screaming and gunshots in the background of the calls, Hicks said.
Investigators believe Williams acted alone. He was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after an off-duty Idaho State Police trooper and an armed civilian bystander exchanged gunfire with him. Hicks credited the pair with driving Williams from the scene and preventing further casualties, calling their actions heroic. Neither has been publicly named by police.
A witness, Lane Koehn, told NBC News he watched the gunman move through the drive-thru toward his car while someone in line returned fire with a handgun, describing Williams as “panicked” and moving “kind of erratically.”
Of the seven people injured, two remained in critical condition Sunday, three were in stable condition, and two had been treated and released, according to police. Authorities have not released the names of the three people killed out of respect for their families. In-N-Out President Lynsi Snyder confirmed in a statement that a female employee was among the dead, saying the company's “heart is broken.”