A man who was meeting a buyer for his gun in a busy Greenwood shopping area was robbed, shot at and eventually took cover inside a store’s dressing room, police said.
The incident happened Sunday afternoon outside the Greenwood Park Mall. The seller’s vehicle was also stolen. Police are investigating.
A 20-year-old man from Bloomington told police he had planned to meet a man outside a mall store to sell him his gun, the Greenwood Police Department report said. The sale had been arranged through an online site where people list firearms for sale, he told police.
The potential buyer instead tried to take his gun, the man told police. The two struggled, and the buyer told the victim he was going to take his vehicle, the report said.
The suspect got the gun away from him at one point, but the victim knocked it loose and grabbed it from the ground, the report said. The suspect then pulled a gun from his waistband, but the magazine fell, and the weapon jammed, the report said.
The victim told police that the suspect pointed the gun at him and pulled the trigger several times, but the gun did not fire, the report said.
He ran inside the mall and to a fitting room inside a store and called police. He was hiding in a fitting room stall when police arrived, the report said.
His vehicle was running and unlocked in the parking lot, and had been stolen when police and security checked for it, the report said.
Police have a description of the suspect, the vehicle he was riding in and the vehicle’s driver, as well as communications the vehicle had with the suspect when arranging the gun sale.
No one was injured and no arrests have been made.
