Jordan Salinas was sitting in his car at the Twin Falls Visitor Center parking lot on Saturday when he heard gunfire coming from the In-N-Out Burger across the way. He grabbed his FN Five-Seven semiautomatic pistol — fitted with a suppressor — and moved toward the sound. Most people run away from rifle fire. Salinas, 35, ran toward it.
Two people were already dead. Seven more were injured. And the 24-year-old gunman, Chad Williams, was still shooting.
"I peeked around the right-hand side of that sign closest to the road, and that's when I saw the individual with his rifle," Salinas told reporters. What he saw was a man methodically targeting cars and people outside the restaurant in Twin Falls, Idaho, with a calm that disturbed him. "He seemed unusually comfortable aiming that rifle at those cars."
Then Salinas opened fire.
"As soon as some rounds started coming at him, everything changed immediately," Salinas said. "All that bravado he had immediately crumbled."
That quote is going to be studied in concealed-carry classes for years. The armed civilian engaged the shooter and drove him off the scene. Williams was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The attack killed Christopher Claunch, 59, and Ashley Garibay, 23, an In-N-Out employee. Five people remained hospitalized as of Sunday, two in critical condition.
Catch Salinas' full description of what he saw and did that day here
Twin Falls Police Chief Hicks confirmed what the anti-gun crowd will spend all week trying to bury. "We believe these actions drove the suspect from the scene and prevented further casualties," Hicks said. Not "may have contributed to." Not "the situation is still under review." Drove the suspect from the scene. Prevented further casualties. That's the chief of police, on the record.
Salinas's girlfriend, Emily Cohelo, told reporters he'd been training with firearms for years. A social media post from 2021 showed him discussing the importance of civilian firearms training — two years before Boise's Towne Square mall shooting put Idaho gun debates on the national radar. The man wasn't acting on impulse. He was prepared, and preparation met opportunity at exactly the worst possible moment.
The usual gun-control apparatus will frame this weekend around the two dead and the seven wounded — and those losses are real. But the question they'll refuse to answer is simple: how many more would there have been? Williams had a rifle, an open crowd, and what police described as a methodical approach to targeting victims. He stopped when someone shot back. Not when he ran out of ammunition. Not when he had a change of heart. When lead started flying in his direction.
Every time one of these tragedies happens, the same voices show up demanding we disarm the Jordan Salinases of the world. Take the guns from the guy who ran toward danger with a legal firearm and the training to use it. The guy whose actions — according to the police chief of the city where it happened — prevented further casualties.
