Idaho restaurant shooter dead from self-inflicted wound; three killed, seven injured

On a Saturday afternoon in Twin Falls, Idaho, the ordinary rhythms of a shopping plaza fractured into chaos. Around two o'clock, gunfire erupted inside a newly opened In-N-Out restaurant, a busy location in a crowded commercial area where hundreds of people were nearby when the shooting began. By the time it ended, three people lay dead and seven others were wounded. The gunman, a 24-year-old named Chad Williams, was found dead near the restaurant from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Police Chief Matthew Hicks announced the findings on Sunday with confidence: Williams had acted alone. The investigation, still unfolding, would continue to examine what drove him to this violence, but authorities were certain no other shooter was involved. The clarity on this point mattered because false claims had already begun circulating online, incorrectly naming another person as the gunman—a person who had nothing to do with the attack. Hicks felt compelled to publicly correct the record.

What likely saved lives that day was the presence of two armed individuals who responded immediately. An off-duty state trooper and an armed citizen, whose identities remain undisclosed, returned fire when Williams opened up on the restaurant. Their actions forced him away from the building and the crowds beyond it. "We believe their actions helped drive the suspect away from the scene, preventing further casualties," Hicks said, his words carrying the weight of what might have been. The chief took time to commend both the officer and the citizen for what he called heroic intervention.

The hospital status of the wounded told its own story of severity. Two of the seven injured had already been treated and released. Three remained in stable condition. Two were still critical, fighting for their lives in the hours after the shooting. One of the three dead was identified as an employee of the restaurant chain. Lynsi Snyder, the owner of In-N-Out, released a statement early Sunday morning that moved beyond corporate language into genuine grief. "My heart is broken, my chest is heavy, my eyes burn from the tears I've shed," she wrote. "We lost one of our beautiful Associates tonight."

Haley Dodaro, a 43-year-old Twin Falls resident, had come to the restaurant for lunch with her mother. They were waiting in the drive-thru line when the world shifted. She watched people running across the road, workers fleeing the building. At first she wondered if there was a fire. Then a man in a reflective vest directing traffic told her the truth: there was a shooter. "People were running out crying and screaming," she recalled. "It was very scary." The scene unfolded in a shopping plaza in a city of about 56,000 people—the kind of place where such violence feels impossible until it happens.

Williams' family was cooperating fully with investigators as detectives worked to understand the motive behind the attack. The FBI had put out a call for any photos or video from the shooting, asking the public to submit material that might help piece together the sequence of events. The investigation was still in its early stages, the full picture of what happened and why still emerging from witness accounts, forensic evidence, and the digital traces people had captured on their phones.