“Gunman kills four at Nevada mall”
In “Gunman kills four at Nevada mall,” Donna Leinwand Leger, a reporter from USA Today, writes about the first homicide in three years in Carson City, Nevada at an IHOP which killed three National Guard members and one civilian. According to Sheriff Kenny Furlong, this attack by Eduardo Sencion was indisputably the most devastating attack Carson City community has ever had.
Eduardo Sencion, 32, was armed with an AK-47 assault rifle on the morning of September 6, 2011 when he decided to commit murder-suicide during the breakfast rush at an IHOP in Carson City strip mall (Leger 1). The total victim count was eleven, but only four of which died. Sencion, who drove his brother’s blue minivan into a Carson City strip outlet parking lot, started his rampage off right after 9 a.m. by walking up to the IHOP and shooting a woman standing beside a motorcycle; then going into the pancake restaurant, walking straight past the hostess at the front door into the main dining room and began shooting off rounds; after a few minutes of being in IHOP Sencion reappeared outside the restaurant and shattered the windows of the neighboring barbeque restaurant and the H&R Block office with automatic fire; and finally ending the attack by turning the gun on himself between two cars outside of the strip mall, completing the action of a murder-suicide (Leger 3). The barbecue restaurant owner Ralph Swagler had to dive to the floor to dodge the bullets when the shooter fired at his establishment; the employees at the tax office had to flee to the back room and bathroom when the gunman showered the front of the building with bullets. "I kept thinking he was in our building," Jayne Peters said, who was taking a tax class at H&R Block. "We were just huddled in the bathroom in the dark. It was really scary" (Leger 4). All involved were innocent bystanders, except Sencion; a prime example of an innocent bystander is the citizen killed, Florence...