The Allen Police Department (APD) and a man who claimed he was at the scene of the mass shooting at Allen Premium Outlets earlier this month are at odds over the facts of the incidents, with the agency claiming that the man “is not a credible incident witness.”
Multiple media outlets quoted Steven Spainhouer in their reporting of the May 6 shooting, during which a gunman in tactical gear killed eight people and sent several others to the hospital, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
In multiple interviews, Spainhouer said that he arrived at the scene and tried to render aid to victims, claiming to have attempted to resuscitate two. He said he had gotten a call from his son, who was barricaded inside a room in the H&M store near where the gunman had begun his deadly attack.
Spainhouer also claimed that he arrived at the scene before the police.
“When I drove up, I didn’t expect to be the first one there. The police had not arrived. It was still an active shooter situation,” Spainhouer told MSNBC last week.
He also claimed he came upon a female victim “crouched down covering her head in the bushes,” saying that he checked for her pulse, only to discover she was likely dead and possibly shielding a boy.
“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,'” Spainhouer said, according to the New York Post. “So rather than traumatize him anymore, I pulled him around the corner sat him down. He was covered from head to toe … like somebody poured blood on him.”
In a statement posted to Facebook on Sunday, APD claimed that Spainhouer’s comments to media outlets did not align with “investigative facts,” prompting investigators to conduct a follow-up interview with Spainhouer.
“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. [He] did not perform [CPR] or administer first aid. [He] did not move a deceased mother who was covering a live child,” APD stated.
According to local authorities, the shooting began at 3:36 p.m. and ended about four minutes later, once the shooter was killed by a police officer who was already at the scene on an unrelated call, CBS Texas reported.
Still, Spainhouer fired back at APD in a Facebook post of his own, insisting that his statements to media outlets were factual.
“I have never said I heard gunshots. … 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,” Spainhouer wrote.
He did not dispute the time when officers said he arrived, but he claimed he beat APD to the scene.
“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 [the] H&M Store,” he claimed.
“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.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Allen resident Nick Spinosa arrived around the same time as Spainhouer, claiming that upon his arrival, he saw a police cruiser at what he believed to be the main entrance to the outlet mall. It had its sirens on.
Spinosa also told The Dallas Express that he saw a second police vehicle on the property with no one inside.
