Saturday, December 15, 2012

What Provoked The Clackamas Mall Shooter To Kill Himself?

From December 14, 2012 KGW:
PORTLAND -- Nick Meli is emotionally drained.  The 22-year-old was at Clackamas Town Center with a friend and her baby when a masked man opened fire.

"I heard three shots and turned and looked at Casey and said, 'are you serious?,'" he said.

The friend and baby hit the floor.  Meli, who has a concealed carry permit, positioned himself behind a pillar.
"He was working on his rifle," said Meli.  "He kept pulling the charging handle and hitting the side."

The break in gunfire allowed Meli to pull out his own gun, but he never took his eyes off the shooter.

"As I was going down to pull, I saw someone in the back of the Charlotte move, and I knew if I fired and missed, I could hit them," he said.

Meli took cover inside a nearby store.  He never pulled the trigger.  He stands by that decision.

"I'm not beating myself up cause I didn't shoot him," said Meli.  "I know after he saw me, I think the last shot he fired was the one he used on himself."

2 comments:

  1. This story will never appear in a major news source.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think you are right to present it as you do -- with a question.

    The interviewee was a young man who was put in an awful situation where he had to consider taking a life to save his own life and the lives of others. The point of his statement was that his decision to not fire did not lead to any further innocent casualties, because the attacker then took his own life.

    ReplyDelete