People work on constructing crosses as others come to see a makeshift memorial near the mall where several people were killed in a mass shooting, Monday, May 8, 2023, in Allen, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
A police department in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, is criticizing a witness to the violence of the Lone Star State’s newest mass shooting in an effort to discredit him as not “credible,” a press release says.
The man at the center of the dispute issued a statement of his own in response to that press release, saying he is “hurt and disappointed.”
Just after 3:30 p.m. on May 6, a gunman opened fire at the Allen Premium Outlets just north of Plano, a crowded outdoor mall with several restaurants and large shops. Eight people were killed – including a Korean American family of four that was reduced to just one child after the shooting – and seven people were injured.
The gunman, Mauricio Garcia, 33, of Dallas, was reportedly a white supremacist who ascribed to right-wing ideology and had Nazi tattoos. He was killed by a police officer at the scene.
Steven Spainhouer, who identifies himself as a former member of law enforcement and U.S. Army officer on his Facebook page, was interviewed or cited by numerous local, national, and international media outlets in the aftermath of the tragedy, the ninth such incident in Texas over the last 14 years, according to the Texas Tribune.
A press release titled “Allen Police Department Warns of Inaccurate Reports” says the APD “wants to inform the public of discrepancies with statements made by a witness to several media outlets.”
“Inconsistencies between these public accounts and investigative facts led Allen Police Department to conduct a follow-up interview,” the press release goes on to say. “During this interview, detectives determined that Mr. Spainhouer is not a credible incident witness.”
Spainhouer’s son works at an H&M in the outlet mall. In press reports and his post, he says he received a phone call from his son about the mass shooting, prompting him to drive over.
The witness criticized the police department’s response time after they criticized him in the press release that was sent to at least one local media outlet – and since obtained by Law&Crime.
Spainhouer’s Facebook post says:
Freddie called me at 3:36pm that Saturday, telling me he was sheltering in place because there was a shooting, in his place of employment at H&M and that’s why I went to the mall.
According to the Allen Press release, I got to the Allen Outlet Mall between 3:44pm and 3:52pm. That’s between 8 minutes and 16 minutes after Freddie’s call to me.
I didn’t see a police car or ambulance for another 5-6 minutes, even though I asked for help using a witness cell phone. That’s a little over 20 minutes since the shooting started, that victims lay injured or dying in front of H&M Store.
Instead of targeting me on what I did or didn’t do, perhaps the Allen Police can explain why it took 20 minutes to get to the front of the H&M store, where there were injured victims, if they were already on site, before I got there.
“The injuries were so severe there was nothing I could do,” Spainhouer was quoted as telling Dallas-based NBC affiliate KXAS. “I found a 4-year-old under a lady, got the 4-year-old, 5-year-old, around the corner. He said he was OK, he was covered in blood from head to toe. There wasn’t anything I could do.”
A CBS News story quoted Spainhouer as saying: “I never imagined in 100 years I would be thrust into the position of being the first first responder on the site to take care of people. The first girl I walked up to was crouched down covering her head in the bushes, so I felt for a pulse, pulled her head to the side and she had no face.”
Now, the link to the original KXAS story redirects browsers to the NBC affiliate’s “local” homepage. The original CBS News link is broken and says: “The page may have been removed, had its name changed, or is just temporarily unavailable.”
There are several extant stories citing Spainhouer’s experience – published by CNN, MSNBC, Business Insider, and The Guardian. The original KXAS and CBS News stories are available on the Internet Archive.
The since-removed KXAS report says Spainhouer told reporters that he performed CPR on victims – but does not quote him saying he did so. A direct quote is mentioned in this context by the TV station where he says: “The injuries were so severe there was nothing I could do.”
The since-pulled CBS News report says the witness claimed to have found a child being protected by his deceased mother. The article then directly quotes Spainhouer telling their local station KTVT: “When I rolled the mother over, he came out. I asked him if he was OK and he said, ‘My mom is hurt, my mom is hurt.’ So rather than traumatize him, I pulled him around the corner sat him down and he was covered from head to toe…like somebody poured blood on him.”
In their press release, the Allen Police Department appears to take issue with those two reports of Spainhouer’s recollections.
“Mr. Spainhouer did not perform Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) or administer first aid,” the APD says. “Mr. Spainhouer did not move a deceased mother who was covering a live child.”
The witness addressed both of those allegations and more.
“I did not move any victims, except the first one I found to check on her,” Spainhouer wrote in his Facebook response. “A small child pulled himself from under a victim and I assisted him to a safe space away from the area.”
He also addressed the CPR issue, saying: “I know what I did and did not do while waiting on the Allen Police and Fire Departments. I know that there were individuals who were deceased and could not be treated with CPR. I know because I was there.”
Multiple media outlets have also reported that Spainhouer was the “first” to arrive on the scene and/or that he arrived “before” police.
In apparent response to those press reports, the APD says: “Mr. Spainhouer arrived between 3:44 and 3:52 p.m. and was not first on the scene, nor was he on the property while gunfire was occurring.”
“First of all, I have never said I heard gunshots at the Allen Outlet Mall,” Spainhouer wrote on Facebook. “When I arrived at the H&M store, there was one person there asking for my help. If there were other first responders there before I showed up, I would have no way of knowing it. If the Allen Police were at the mall before me, I would have no way to know it, because they were not at the H&M Store location where most of the shooting victims were located.”
At least one journalist who interviewed Spainhouer is now taking his side in the dispute:
1. I did a 49-minute interview with Steven Spainhouer and his son.
He never claimed to me to be there when there was gunfire. He never said anything about performing CPR. He said he saw a child crawling out from under a woman on the other side of the bushes and scooped him up. https://t.co/ZTWKrJRxy0
— Bobby Ross Jr. (@bobbyross) May 13, 2023
“He never claimed to me to be there when there was gunfire,” Christian Chronicle reporter Bobby Ross Jr. wrote on Twitter. “He never said anything about performing CPR. He said he saw a child crawling out from under a woman on the other side of the bushes and scooped him up.”
In an interview with CNN last week — and after his reported comments to the CBS station — Spainhouer described that the child “came out from under” what he believed to be the mother and did not say he rolled the mother over.
Law&Crime reached out to the APD for comment on this story but no response was immediately forthcoming.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
