An Allen, Texas, police officer is being praised for his heroic efforts to take down a Texas Mall mass shooter who shot 15 people, killing eight of them, in May.
Police bodycam footage was released on Wednesday, June 28 that showed the encounter between a Black officer and 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia.
The officer’s name was not released, but the video from May 6 shows the officer speaking to a mother and her two children before multiple gunshots sounded off in the distance. The officer radioed in that he heard gunshots at the Allen Premium Outlets, north of Dallas, Texas.
He then went inside his police cruiser to grab his rifle and immediately started running in the direction that he heard the gunshots.
The officer continued to move through the outlet mall and gave his location over the radio until he eventually confronted the shooter. He spotted Garcia firing shots from his AR-15 rifle and took him down from a distance. Garcia took the lives of eight people, including two sisters, ages 8 and 11 and a 3-year-old boy and his parents, before he was fatally shot.
“This video shows how quickly a routine interaction with the public turned into a life-and-death situation,” police chief Brian Harvey said in a statement Wednesday. “The officer recognized the danger, ran toward the gunfire and neutralized the threat — and for his actions, the Allen community is forever grateful.”
According to ABC News, on Tuesday, a grand jury panel declined to indict the officer who killed Garcia after prosecutors from the Collin County District Attorney’s Office and the Texas Rangers presented evidence to them on Monday.
The Allen Police Department said in a statement that it “appreciates the hard work of the grand jury, Texas Rangers and the District Attorney’s Office by ensuring a process that helps promote accountability, community involvement and transparency.”
