Widely interviewed witness of Texas mall shooting isn’t ‘credible,’ police say

Steven Spainhouer says he is ‘hurt and disappointed’ and questions ‘why it took 20 minutes’ for police to reach front of H&M store

A Texas police department is disputing a widely interviewed bystander’s account of the 6 May mass shooting at a mall in Allen in which eight people were killed.

Steven Spainhouer spoke to numerous local and national news outlets about his experience of the shoot at the Allen Premium Outlets.

The man said he drove over to the mall after getting a call from his son, who worked at an H&M store.

Mr Spainhouer said he believed he arrived to the store before law enforcement and found multiple people who had been shot.

“The injuries were so severe there was nothing I could do,” he told 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.”

“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,” he added in an interview with CBS News. “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.”

In a press release on Friday, the Allen Police Department (APD) said in a press release it had conducted follow-up interview with Mr Spainhouer and determined he was “not a credible incident witness”.

“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,” the department said in the release.

“Mr Spainhouer did not perform Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) or administer first aid,” the APD added, addressing various claims about the man’s experience that were circulating in the media. “Mr Spainhouer did not move a deceased mother who was covering a live child.”

The Texas man responded to the police in a Facebook post, Law and Crime reported.

“I have seen the Allen Police Department press release about me. I am hurt and disappointed,” Mr Spainhouer wrote.

“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.”