Jordan Salinas has now witnessed two mass shootings in his 35 years on this earth. The Kimberly, Idaho, resident felt like a victim at the first one. He shot back at the second one.
Salinas was sitting in the drive-thru at the Twin Falls In-N-Out on Saturday when he saw customers fleeing the restaurant and assumed there was a fire in the building. He and his girlfriend were heading out for an afternoon of horseback riding and were just stopping momentarily to grab a bite to eat.
Then he heard the unmistakable “pop-pop-pop” of gunfire and knew he had to act.
Hero civilian who fired back at In-N-Out shooter trained in self defense after witnessing another mass shooting https://t.co/cNCeEAiigx pic.twitter.com/oDglJMkqSF
— New York Post (@nypost) August 3, 2026
"Salinas reached for his shoulder holster and drew an FN Five-Seven — a semi-automatic pistol with a suppressor fixed to the barrel," and, despite protests from his girlfriend, ran towards the trouble and enacted the response framework he had practiced so many times before.
Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.
Observe. Salinas ran from the car, gun drawn. Video posted to social media shows a man slinking behind In-N-Out signs and shrubs, seeking out the source of the gunfire.
Orient. Hidden from view, he established sight lines. He reminded himself to stay disciplined on the trigger. Soon, he saw a man, who police later identified as 24-year-old Chad Williams, standing by the drive-through window. He watched as Williams lifted a rifle to his shoulder and fired toward cars. Decide. “OK,” Salinas thought. “This is the guy.” Act. He leveled his pistol with both hands, and fired.
Decide. “OK,” Salinas thought. “This is the guy.”
Act. He leveled his pistol with both hands, and fired.
The crazed gunman shooting up the In-N-Out parking lot "did not like it when bullets started firing both ways,” Salinas said. It turns out another customer, an off-duty police officer who was inside the restaurant when the shots broke out, had joined Salinas in returning the gunfire.
The gunman, Chad Williams, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but Twin Falls County Sheriff Jack Johnson commended the two men who shot back, saying, "These people are true heroes in our community. They diverted the shooter and without a doubt saved many lives.”
The reason Jordan Salinas was prepared to shoot back against Williams was because of that first mass shooting he experienced back in 2021 at the Boise Towne Square Mall, in which two people were killed and several others injured. He noticed that the gunman was going after "softer targets," and it occurred to him that someone like his wheelchair-bound brother, for whom he's a caregiver, would be an obvious target in that scenario.
SEE ALSO: Watch: Hero Armed Civilian Shoots It Out With Idaho Gunman
That's when he amped up his firearm training and practiced that four-step framework that guided him on Saturday.
Local media reports that Salinas was treated like a hero Sunday when he stopped in at his favorite coffee shop. One customer shared a meme going around that showed "Salinas’ bearded silhouette black against the yellow of a Gadsden Flag, pistol pointed across the screen. Someone had replaced his ball cap with a Stetson. Underneath, they’d printed: “Idaho shoots back.”"
Salinas himself seems to be downplaying his actions, saying simply, "There’s a task that needs to be done, and we’re the ones who need to do it."
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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