GREENWOOD, Ind. — The families of several victims killed in the 2022 Greenwood Park Mall mass shooting have filed two wrongful death lawsuits against Simon Property Group, the mall's owner who has faced scrutiny regarding security measures in the wake of the shooting.
Background
Police were called around 6 p.m. on July 17, 2022, to the mall located on U.S. Hwy 31 North after 20-year-old Jonathan Sapirman walked out of a bathroom and began open firing into the food court.
Ultimately, Sapirman killed three people - 56-year-old Pedro Pineda, his wife, 37-year-old Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda and 30-year-old Victor Gomez - and injured two more. The gunman was eventually shot and killed by then-22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, a legally armed citizen visiting the mall.
Now, the families of the three victims killed have filed lawsuits against the companies that own and provide security for Greenwood Park Mall, alleging that Indy-based Simon Property Group and Allied Security Services failed to properly protect the Pinedas and Gomez from being killed.
Wrongful death suits
In the wrongful death lawsuits filed Tuesday, attorneys for the victims' families argue that Simon and Allied "failed to take reasonable precautions" to assure that the mall was safe for shoppers.
The suits claims that, prior to the mass shooting, Simon "was on notice" that their Indianapolis-area malls had been the site of shootings, aggravated assaults, gang-related crimes and more. Despite this, lawyers argue that Simon and Allied's security resources "are not dedicated to proactively detecting suspicious activity and weapons" inside their malls.
"In the past three years there have been at least four shootings at Simon malls in and around Indianapolis," the lawsuits read. "These terrifying numbers serve as a stark reminder that horrific criminal attacks are not only common but are a real and foreseeable risk any time individuals gather in public spaces such as the Greenwood Park Mall."
The lawsuits go on to argue that - specifically on July 17, 2022 - Allied security personnel should have known about Sapirman's suspicious activity prior to the shooting as he sat inside a bathroom stall with weapons for over a half hour.
They also claim that security and EMS response to the shooting was not sufficient and that, had Dicken not intervened, Sapirman could have fired "hundreds of more rounds" and killed dozens of more people.
"[Simon and Allied] knew or should have known that the only way to prevent deaths and serious injuries when an Assailant such as this one fires into a crowd with a semi-automatic rifle is to take reasonable steps to prevent these shootings from occurring in the first place," the suits conclude. "The defendants owed [the Pinedas and Gomez] a duty of care."
Given the allegations of wrongful death and gross negligence against Simon and Allied, the lawyers are now requesting that the court allow a jury to give judgment to the two companies and determine what damages were caused by the shooting.
Click here to read a full copy of the wrongful death lawsuit filings. Attornies Gregory L. Laker and Max N. Panoff are representing the families. Laker previously represented other victims in the mass shooting that accused Simon of being negligent with its security.
Simon security issues
Within a span of six months throughout 2022 and early 2023, three separate shootings occurred at Simon Mall properties in the Indy area.
At the end of December 2022, Greenwood PD said a group of people got into a shootout in the parking lot of the Greenwood Park Mall. Nobody was shot but the gunfire sparked false rumors of an active shooter and led to mass panic during the busy shopping days before Christmas.
Then, on Jan. 3, 2023, two teenagers were injured in a shooting at the Simon-owned Castleton Square Mall after a misunderstanding over identical cars occurred in the parking lot. 16-year-old Michael Mason Jr. eventually died from his injuries.
FOX59/CBS4 repeatedly reached out to Simon Property Group with questions about mall security during this time, and each time they refused to answer or simply ignored those questions.