An off-duty state trooper and an armed civilian returned fire on a gunman at a Twin Falls, Idaho, In-N-Out Burger, and police say their intervention drove the shooter away from the restaurant and prevented more deaths.
Chad Williams, 24, opened fire with an AR-style rifle at the recently opened restaurant on Saturday, killing an In-N-Out Burger employee and a customer before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Seven other people were wounded. Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks identified Williams at a Sunday news conference and confirmed he acted alone.
But the casualty count could have been far worse. An off-duty state trooper who happened to be at the scene drew a weapon and fired on Williams. So did an armed citizen. AP News reported that the two diverted Williams away from the restaurant, breaking the attack before more people inside could be hit.
Chief Hicks did not hold back about what the trooper and the citizen accomplished.
"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. We believe their actions helped drive the suspect away from the scene, preventing further casualties."
Neither the trooper nor the armed citizen has been publicly identified. Police have not said whether either one's rounds struck Williams or whether the gunman's fatal wound came entirely from his own hand. What the evidence does show, according to multiple agencies, is that the two intervened while Williams was still firing, and that the shooting stopped shortly after.
Witness saw a man with a pistol engage the rifle-wielding gunman
Eyewitness Lane Koehn, 34, gave one of the clearest accounts of the civilian intervention. Koehn told reporters he saw Williams emerge from the drive-thru area carrying what appeared to be an AR-style rifle, and then watched another man step up with a handgun.
Just The News reported Koehn's description of the moment:
"[A man] who had a handgun, opened fire on the suspected shooter."
That account matches the official version Chief Hicks gave Sunday. A handgun against a rifle, in a crowded parking lot on a Saturday afternoon, at one of southern Idaho's busiest restaurant locations. The armed citizen and the off-duty trooper chose to act anyway.
Stories like this one follow a pattern that gun-control advocates rarely acknowledge. When a lawful gun owner intervenes in an active shooting, the body count drops. It happened again in Twin Falls. It has happened in cases across the country, from armed residents confronting home intruders in Tulsa to citizens stopping violent crimes in progress on the street.
Three dead, two still critical, and no motive in sight
City spokesperson Josh Palmer confirmed three people died and seven others were wounded. As of Sunday, two of the injured had been released from the hospital. Three remained in stable condition. Two were still in critical condition.
The dead include Williams, the In-N-Out employee, and a customer. Police have not released the names of the victims. In-N-Out owner Lynsi Snyder issued a statement through the Washington Examiner that captured the senselessness of the attack:
"He shot both on our property and off, and ended his life shortly after he took the precious lives of our Associate and Customers, innocent people who never saw it coming."
Investigators have not established a motive. Police have not said whether Williams had any prior connection to the restaurant or its employees. The FBI's Salt Lake City field office, led by Special Agent in Charge Robert Boles, deployed evidence response teams and victim services specialists to Twin Falls.
Boles described the federal commitment in broad terms at the Sunday news conference:
"We have committed the full weight of our resources to the Twin Falls Police Department, deploying every investigative and intelligence tool at our disposal."
That federal support extends beyond the crime scene. Reuters confirmed that both the off-duty trooper and the civilian actively engaged Williams by returning gunfire, a detail Twin Falls police included in their official account of the incident.
Multiple agencies flooded Twin Falls with officers after the attack
The response stretched well beyond Twin Falls city limits. Officers from the Meridian, Caldwell, and Nampa police departments were sworn in to assist Idaho State Police with patrols in the city. Chief Hicks described the shooting as one of the most "chaotic" situations his department has faced.
That kind of mutual-aid deployment is standard after mass-casualty events, but it also reflects the scale of what Twin Falls, a city of roughly 50,000 in southern Idaho, had to absorb in a single afternoon. A recently opened fast-food restaurant became a crime scene. An employee went to work and never came home. A customer stopped for a burger and was killed.
Mass shootings produce a familiar cycle: grief, political arguments, calls for new laws. What gets less attention is what actually stopped this one. Not a new regulation. Not a government program. An off-duty trooper with a sidearm and a private citizen who was carrying a firearm and had the nerve to use it when it counted, much like the Marine veteran who fought off armed attackers in Maryland earlier this year.
Chief Hicks told reporters Sunday that he believes the threat to the community is over. The investigation continues, with the FBI and multiple Idaho law enforcement agencies working to piece together Williams's movements, his access to the AR-style rifle, and whatever drove him to open fire on strangers at a burger joint on a Saturday.
Meanwhile, mass-casualty incidents remain a grim reality in communities large and small. Just weeks ago, a shooting at an Oklahoma lake party left one dead and 22 wounded, underscoring how quickly public gatherings can turn deadly.
Two people ran toward the gunfire, and that made the difference
Fox News reported that Williams was found dead near the restaurant. Whether he turned the gun on himself because the return fire forced his hand, or whether he had planned to end his own life regardless, remains an open question for investigators. What is not in dispute is the sequence: Williams opened fire, two armed individuals fired back, Williams moved away from the restaurant, and the attack ended.
The identities of the trooper and the citizen may eventually become public. For now, they are two people who carried firearms lawfully, found themselves in the middle of a massacre, and made a choice that Chief Hicks says saved lives. Not every story involving off-duty officers ends this way. This one did, because two armed Americans acted.
The debate over guns in America never stops. But in Twin Falls on Saturday, the question answered itself: when a man with a rifle started killing people, the only thing that stopped him was someone else with a gun.
