A heavy police presence is seen outside Greenwood Park Mall in Greenwood in this May 2020 file photo. DAILY JOURNAL FILE PHOTO
7:29 p.m. update
Greenwood police reached out to correct the record that Simon Property Group banned the men for one year, not for a lifetime as was previously reported to the Daily Journal by GPD. The story below was updated to reflect that.
Original story
Chaos ensued after a man dropped a magazine out of his backpack Saturday afternoon at Greenwood Park Mall.
A high-capacity magazine for an AK-47 pistol fell out of the bag at around 2:30 p.m., prompting people in the mall to scatter, for fear another mass shooting was about to unfold. Calls flooded into Johnson County dispatch and people frantically posted on social media to find out what happened.
The magazine dropped to the ground and bullets scattered on the floor, which caused the man who dropped it to frantically gather them up and run to the nearby bathroom to put it back together, said Matt Fillenwarth, Greenwood assistant police chief.
At some point during the chaos, a woman sitting nearby kicked away the magazine. Given the high emotions of the situation and the number of people who carry guns, Fillenwarth said the man is lucky that’s the worst that happened.
Mall security and Greenwood police responded to the scene and apprehended the man and two others who were with him who were carrying non-AK-47 handguns, Fillenwarth said.
There is no indication any of the three had plans to use the guns at the mall, they just were carrying, he said.
After running their information police found that all three were legally carrying, as they did not illegally obtain the guns and are not barred from carrying a gun under Indiana law, Fillenwarth said.
However, because Simon Property Group does not allow guns at the mall, the three were issued one-year bans from the mall, he said.
The incident was eerie for people at the mall because the incident happened in the food court, in almost exactly the same spot a mass shooting took place on July 17. The incident also involved the same men’s restroom, where the mass shooter prepared the weapon he used to take three lives and injure two others.
