Kelly Wilkinson/The Indianapolis Star via AP
FBI agents gather at the scene of a deadly shooting, Sunday, July 17, 2022, at the Greenwood Park Mall, in Greenwood, Ind.
By Noah Crenshaw | Daily Journal
For The Republic
GREENWOOD — Federal investigators have unlocked the Greenwood Park Mall gunman’s phone, with the contents showing he had homicidal and suicidal thoughts for years.
However, there was no information about the gunman’s plans to carry out an attack at the mall, police say.
Greenwood Police Department officials announced Thursday that the FBI was able to unlock and extract data on the cellphone belonging to the gunman, Jonathan Douglas Sapirman, 20, of Greenwood. News of the breakthrough comes days before the one-year anniversary of the Greenwood Park Mall Shooting, which occurred on July 17, 2022.
Sapirman
The gunman entered the mall that day, first going into a food court bathroom for an hour to prepare for the shooting. He opened fire around 5:56 p.m., killing three and injuring two others before he was fatally shot by 22-year-old Seymour resident Elisjsha “Eli” Dicken.
Indianapolis couple Pedro Pineda, 56, and Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda, 37, were killed, along with Victor Gomez, 30, also of Indianapolis. Two others, including a juvenile, were injured in the shooting.
The FBI unlocked the gunman’s phone in May, recovering 206 videos and 3,458 images. They also found notes kept on the phone, call and text logs and internet searches, according to a Greenwood Police Department news release.
Many of the images and videos were of a similar nature to the gunman’s social media posts, which police had previously said had shown he had a fascination with Nazi Germany and mass shootings. In some comments, he seemed to almost idolize mass shooters in some of the comments, Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison said in December.
There were many pictures of Adolf Hitler, Nazi propaganda and firearms on the gunman’s phone. Many of the videos extracted were of mass killings and extremely graphic in nature. One of the videos was of security camera footage of a Sept. 23, 2016 mass shooting at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington, Greenwood police said Thursday.
Police say the most notable discovery from the gunman’s phone was an image of a handwritten suicide note taken on April 9, 2020. The note began with “My final thoughts on paper,” and the gunman later wrote, “I’m a sociopath. I want to hurt people.”
The gunman also alluded to shooting himself with a shotgun, saying the reasons for his actions were “the result of my issues: mental instability, depression, frustration and sexual isolation,” according to Greenwood police.
Because the note was written over two years before the mall shooting, investigators believe the gunman’s homicidal and suicidal thoughts had been manifesting for years.
Investigators also found a note written by the gunman on June 18, 2022 — nearly a month before the mall shooting. The note appeared to be a draft of a text message he planned to send to his brother, and he expressed his frustrations about his phone being turned off.
In the months before the shooting, the gunman was jobless and his brother and father had stopped financially supporting him. He was going to be evicted from his apartment prior to the shooting, police previously said.
In the June 18, 2022 note, the gunman also said he planned to shoot himself. Later that day, the gunman did an internet search for “how to go through with committing suicide,” according to Greenwood police.
No information about the mall or his plans to carry out an attack were found on his phone. This is consistent with what police said in December, as after serving numerous search warrants, they were unable to find a manifesto or note, along with any posts from the gunman making threats to shoot up the mall.
For the complete story, see Friday’s Republic.
