(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Sunny Hostin, co-host of The View, downplayed and derided the efforts of a 22-year-old man who stopped short a mass shooting at an Indiana mall and likely saved dozens of lives.
Elisjsha Dicken was at the Greenwood Park Mall with his girlfriend on Sunday when a man opened fire at civilians.
Reports say Dicken reacted within 15 seconds of the attacker’s first shot, using his 9-millimeter handgun and firing at least 10 rounds, killing the shooter. While the horror included the deaths of three innocent people, along with the gunman shot by Dicken, authorities said that his armed intervention likely saved “countless lives.”
Instead of applauding the heroic young man, Hostin called Dicken “lucky” for not having hit any bystanders, NewsBusters reported.
“With that ‘Good Samaritan’ thing—listen, I was trained when I was at the Justice Department in firearms,” Hostin crowed. “And I was trained in defensive firearm training. It’s very hard to hit a moving target.”
“It’s hard for people that are trained to hit a moving target,” she continued. “It is very lucky that that Good Samaritan hit that moving target in that way.”
“That was a lucky moment,” co-host Joy Behar derided Dicken’s life-saving heroics.
Continuing in her criticism, Hostin also claimed that Dicken was carrying his firearm in a gun-free zone.
“And he had a gun permit, but he wasn’t supposed to be in the mall with a gun,” the co-host complained. “So he broke the law even though he was a Good Samaritan.”
The young man who stopped the mass shooting did not need a permit, per an Indiana law which took effect on July 1, days before the attempted shooting. However, according to his lawyer, Dicken did have a permit for his gun.
Dicken’s attorney, Guy Relford, disputed Hostin’s claim that the mall’s no-gun policy creates legal problems for his client.
“It certainly has no effect whatsoever on his ability to use force to defend himself or to defend the other people in the mall,” Relford said. “He checks all those boxes as perfectly as he possibly could.”
Even the mall staff has praised Dicken for his heroic action, along with area police.
“I will say his actions were nothing short of heroic,” said Greenwood Police chief Jim Ison.
“He engaged the gunman from quite a distance with a handgun, was very proficient in that, very tactically sound, and as he moved to close in on the suspect he was also motioning for people to exit behind him,” Ison explained.
