Three people died and seven others were wounded Saturday afternoon when a gunman opened fire at the newly opened In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho. The suspect, 24-year-old Chad Williams, carried an AR-15-style rifle. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot after an armed citizen and an off-duty Idaho State Police trooper forced him away from the crowded restaurant and parking lot.
Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks made it clear the intervention mattered. “We believe their actions helped drive the suspect away from the scene, preventing further casualties,” he said. Twin Falls County Sheriff Jack Johnson went further, calling the two men “true heroes in our community” who “without a doubt saved many lives.”
The attack unfolded around 2:30 p.m. on August 1 during peak hours at the busy Blue Lakes Boulevard location. Williams fired from the drive-thru area, hitting vehicles and people inside and outside the restaurant. Cellphone video captured the chaos: people running, an employee in uniform being dragged across the parking lot after being shot in the chest, and then the return fire that changed the direction of the attack.
Jordan Salinas, 35, a healthcare worker and full-time caregiver for his wheelchair-bound brother, was one of the men who shot back. He lives in nearby Kimberly. After surviving the 2021 Boise Towne Square mall shooting that killed two people, Salinas took training seriously. Soft targets, he reasoned, are exactly where someone helping a person in a wheelchair would be vulnerable. He practices in the desert outside Eden and carries an FN Five-seveN pistol in a shoulder holster.
When he pulled into the In-N-Out that Saturday with his girlfriend, he first thought the panic was a kitchen fire. Then he heard the pops. He ran toward the gunfire, drew his pistol, and used the simple process he trained on—observe, orient, decide, act. He located Williams near the drive-thru window and engaged. An off-duty state trooper who had been a customer inside the restaurant also returned fire. The exchange lasted a couple of minutes and pushed Williams out of the dense customer area toward an open lot near the visitor center. When sirens got close, Salinas stood down.
“He did not like it when bullets started firing both ways,” Salinas later said. He described feeling no fear during the exchange and focused afterward on the victims and their families rather than his own role.
Idaho’s laws made this response possible. The state allows constitutional carry for U.S. citizens 18 and older who can legally possess a firearm. No permit is required to carry concealed. That legal environment, combined with a citizen who actually trains and an off-duty officer who stayed ready, produced the outcome police described.
In-N-Out President Lynsi Snyder released a statement expressing the company’s grief. One of the dead was an associate who had been taking care of customers. “She was taking care of our most important asset—our customers, and her life was taken by a disgusting human who doesn’t value the lives of others or his own,” Snyder wrote.
No motive has been released. The FBI is assisting the Twin Falls investigation. Early reports varied slightly on the exact death toll, but the consistent accounting from later briefings and multiple outlets puts the civilian fatalities at three with seven wounded, at least two of them critically.
This is the kind of incident that shows the difference between theory and reality. A determined attacker with a rifle can create a high body count in a soft target very quickly. The presence of two armed people who chose to engage shortened the attack window and moved the threat away from the densest group of potential victims. That is not a Hollywood script. It is what the responding officers on the ground observed and publicly credited.
