Investigate Earth Conspiracy Podcast - Idaho In-N-Out Shooting: Eyewitness Describes the Deadly Twin Falls Attack

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

A quiet afternoon in Twin Falls, Idaho, turned into tragedy when a gunman opened fire outside the city's new In-N-Out Burger, leaving three people dead and seven others injured before taking his own life. Authorities have identified the suspect as Chad Williams and say the motive remains under investigation.In this episode, we break down everything known about the Idaho In-N-Out shooting, including the timeline of events, what police have revealed so far, and the unanswered questions surrounding the attack. We also speak with an eyewitness who was at the scene and shares firsthand details of the terrifying moments as gunfire erupted.Join Chad and Sherry as they examine the latest developments, discuss the investigation, and hear a powerful account from someone who witnessed one of Idaho's deadliest shootings in recent memory.Investigate Earth Store

Hi, I'm your house in my beautiful eyes like these diamonds. I know I should have known. Right now you're not alone. Hello and welcome to Investigator's podcast. I'm your host Chad alongside my beautiful wife, Sherry. On tonight's episode of Quiet Saturday afternoon and Twin Falls, Idaho turned into chaos when a gunman opened fire outside a newly open in-and-out burger,

sending customers and employees running for cover. Authorities say 24-year-old Chad Williams carried out what appears to have been a random attack before taking his own life after being confronted by an off-duty Idaho State Police officer and armed citizen investigators believe he acted alone and as of tonight they have not identified a motive the shooting left three innocent people dead and seven others injured including several remain in critical condition and one of those killed was an in-and-out employee who had been serving customers when the gunfire erupted tonight we'll break down what happened what investigators have learned so far the heroic actions that may have prevented even more lives from being lost

and the questions that still remain. Guys, welcome to the show. It is August the 2nd, 2026. The name of the song is You equals Trouble by Emmy. Tonight, we are going to talk about and break down the shooting. This has been all over social media. Obviously, yesterday it happened in Idaho. We also have a listener of ours that was pretty much right there when all this went down.

He's going to come on and tell his experience and what he saw. I believe he was there with his kids. And so that's just a bigger thing, obviously. when you're a part of something like this, say mass shooting in any way or active shooter situation. And it was interesting talking to him last night and just kind of getting his firsthand type account or at least what he witnessed in and around. He wasn't, I don't believe, exactly there when it happened. But he was literally right, I think, next door when the shooting was all going down. So we'll talk about all that on tonight's show.

Yeah, it's just crazy. When you think about like these mass shootings and when it's happening, you don't really think about being right there. but what happens if you are right there? It's just like it's almost scary to think about. Yeah. And I think that's a big point of this show too. We're going to talk about all of the potential theories. The weird thing is mainstream media has not really been saying a ton about this.

They've been really quiet about it. But there are some connections. Number one, it's kind of weird that my name's Chad, our listener that's coming on tonight, his name's Chad. And the guy that did this is named Chad. Yeah, this is all Chad's tonight. And it's also crazy because. they all thought he was a teenager at first, but come to find out he was 24 years old.

Yeah. I mean, so he's not a teenager. He knew exactly what he was doing, but everyone's saying it's the usual suspect. Yeah. So we'll see. Yeah. So the usual suspect and what they mean by that is pretty interesting. If you look across social media, what do they mean by usual suspect?

Are they saying a white guy that's a younger white guy or are they saying it's now a trans person? because as we know, you know, mass shootings, especially over the past five to ten years, a lot of it has been from the trans type. There's always some type of connection to trans and or leftist leaning ideologies. Now, for a long time, we never really understood why all these white kids were going to schools and shooting up all the schools. What we did potentially think was because of some connection maybe to SSRIs. And I've talked about that, Sherry, with my past.

As a teenager, when I was a teenager, I did not have necessarily the best life growing up. And not saying my mom was the good mom, she absolutely was. And my dad definitely got better after I was 18. That's the same as my family, too. My mom was my best friend. She was my everything growing up. Like we were inseparable. But my dad and I, not so much when I was younger, but as I became an adult is when we really built a relationship.

And I think that's the same way with you and your dad. But I think we both struggled with our parents in their relationships. Yeah, it was interesting. Me and my dad never actually had a relationship until he started having strokes. And I think he was in his 40s when he started having strokes. And that obviously completely changed his whole outlook and mindset on life because he, you know, I think felt vulnerable. I think he started realizing the shit that he had done in the past and he felt bad about all of it.

And so it did allow us to, I guess, have a better relationship as I was older. but you know the interesting thing as a kid because of that childhood and because of the way that I kind of grew up in a volatile environment you know back then especially this was right when SSRIs were starting to really become popular zoloft was a big one and it wasn't just zoloft there was I think over the course of probably six years or seven years from the time I was like 11 to the time I was probably 16 or 17 or somewhere around there I was on probably 20 20 different SSRIs and not not at the same time, but it was just like I would get on one. It would do some crazy shit to me.

I would feel weird. I would be even more depressed. And then there was an occasion where I finally got on Zoloft, which is I believe when Zoloft first came out. And, you know, at first I was like, well, I'm not feeling as depressed or anxious or anxiety as I was because I was getting anxiety attacks because of the household I was living in because of the constant fighting and the arguing and just the crazy shit that happened at home. And so Zolov started to work.

I felt like because I didn't worry about things as much anymore. I didn't, I don't know, I just felt kind of disconnected from it all. And I didn't just feel disconnected because like from the bad stuff in the house, I felt also disconnected from any good. Yeah, well, just having any kind of feelings good or bad. Yeah. And I think the difference between when you grew up and when I grew up, they did not prescribe children medications.

Yeah. You know, I did go see a counselor or psychologist like once a week because of my family dynamics, but I was never prescribed to anything. But for you to be on so many medications from 11 to 17 is just crazy to me because I wasn't on anything, but, you know, I did experience the same things and I had the same feelings as you did, like depression and sad, you know, when your family's fighting all the time, who's going to be happy? as a child. Yeah. And I think the problem was like with my situation, because it did actually

get to a boiling point at one point in time. And the boiling point I'll talk about in just a moment, but as I said, the Zoloft made me feel disconnected. And when I say disconnected, it made me feel disconnected from good and bad. And although, you know, the bad wasn't bad. I wasn't happy. You know, I was just existing is the way I kind of felt. And so I went about my- It's almost like you're numb. Yeah. I went about my everyday life. I did kind of feel numb. was kind of what I, what I started feeling. So,

but then it was interesting because on the news, they started talking about, and I kind of just heard it in passing. I wasn't into news back then. I didn't care about that, but I started hearing about this massive spike in teenage suicide. And the interesting thing about this was is about probably two years later, there were some studies that were done on some of these child suicides,

especially from like 13 to 17 years old. and the amount of kids at that time that were on Zoloft that were killing themselves was like, I think it was somewhere in a neighborhood of like 78% of 13 to 17 year old suicides. They were on Zoloft. So then they started, I think they pulled it off the market briefly. And it's on the market today. It is. Yeah.

They pulled it off the market briefly. I think now I don't know. And here's the thing I don't know. I don't know if they changed their formula into Zoloft or whatever. Number one thing they did wrong. though was the fact that they were prescribing this like candy to kids. Right. And when when kids are developing and it's not just their muscles and they're getting bigger,

their brains are actively developing. And I think they say that, you know, a child's brain don't actually fully develop until like 25 years old. And I think a female's brain is a little bit longer, if I'm not mistaken. So the maturity level or shorter. Wait a minute. Girls get mature way faster than boys. Yeah, it's one of the two.

Well, it's one of the two. but the Zoloft did eventually lead me to a place one day that something did happen at the house. It was a pretty bad situation and it affected my life like dramatically. And so that was the only time that I ever was extremely close to suicide. Like that was when I was probably 17, I think or 16, 17. What were you thinking about it or you were planning it? No, it was, it was literally about to happen. And the only reason it really didn't happen was because of my brother and because he found me.

And that's the only reason it didn't happen. And the reason for that is, and the reason I go back to this is because, you know, so many years removed off of those medications and then just remembering back then the way I felt, the way I felt then was that, you know, there's no consequences to me killing myself. If anything, it's better. It's better off than this. It's better off than what I'm going through. it's going to instantly take away this this pain.

Like I'm already on medication. Right. I just didn't think about the consequence. I didn't think about my future. I didn't think I had a future. I didn't really care if I had a future or not. And that was really the big difference for me. You just wanted to take away the pain.

Yeah, that was the big difference. And I just didn't think about consequences. And I directly link that to the Zoloft because it just, it cuts off that. Well, I mean, there's a reason why kids were killing themselves from 12 to 17. And it was, and they were mostly on Zoloft. And the reason why I go, because, you know, my best friend Pauline, she has gone through very similar things and she did try to commit suicide and was in ICU for two weeks trying to do that. She was not on any kind of medication, but her son was murdered.

And she went through those same symptoms that you're saying that you had that she just wanted to get rid of the pain. She didn't look at the consequences. She didn't look at what was coming next or who had hurt or what would happen. And she just wanted the pain to stop. Yeah. We had like very huge, like conversations about that. And, you know, and because of that, we felt the need to write our book, Mother's Promise, the Mark Hayst story. If you guys have not looked that up, but it's an amazing story.

Yeah. And I think it did heal Pauline in the process to go through and write down everything she was feeling and to actually author the book. But, you know, I'm going back to. that Pauline was an adult, you were a kid, but she was experiencing the same things. She just wanted the pain to end. So is it a kid's brain? Could it be both? I don't know.

You know, and I think about this too, Chad, I think everyone as a child going into their preteens, you know, they're going through all this crazy stuff. And I wonder, do all kids kind of experience that and feel some type of level like, well, I should just kill myself. Is it because of attention? or is it something like in the fact that you're saying where you actually were going to do it? Yeah, I didn't tell anybody about it. Because I, you know, I think as a teen, I'm sure I felt like that at times, but I was never, you know,

I never put a gun to my head or try to slice my wrist. I guess maybe I wanted attention at times as a preteam, but never to that extent. So maybe it could be because of the medications you were on. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, everybody's different. And, you know, although, you know, I was telling you that story, not because it's a suicide podcast, but I was telling you the story because of the fact that I just know that, and by the way, we have no idea if this guy was on SSRIs or not, we have no idea.

But I do know that kids today are the most heavily medicated kids of the entirety of the United States of American history. And that's for everything. I mean, if you're excited, you're on this. If you're depressed, you're on that. If you're a little too excited, you're on another medication and you're in different programs and and they call you all these things and they prescribe everything to you. And I think in large part, it is screwing up a lot of our youth's mind.

It is on top of the youth's minds just not understanding what the hell to do or what to think or how to feel about anything. You then have this massive onslaught of social media that is constantly trying to buy your soul, whether it's for this purpose or that purpose or something else. Yeah. And preteens. Yeah. There's so much out there that is so scary that I see.

on there that, you know, like these cartoon things showing like guns and shooting each other constantly and saying, oh, it's, you know, it's just this to shoot yourself. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean. It's just crazy stuff going on. And I think it also, too, you know, like with RFK and everything he's brought to the table since he's been in administration with Trump, I think he is trying to show the light of that, that we're overmedicated.

Oh, yeah. And we're overmedicated in a lot of ways, not just, you know, these. antidepressants, but we're also medicated as far as vaccines. And my point that I'm bringing that up is because I feel like a lot of the brain chemistry has changed in children the way they're born and the way we vaccinate and how much we vaccinate. You know, you think about way back when I was a child, I didn't even know what autism was. Now, you know, when I've retired from my classroom three years ago, I had at least three or four

autistic children in my classroom. Yeah. I was never even trained on how to deal with that. You know, I always had autistic children because I was good with dealing with it. But I'm just saying it got more prominent as I went on teaching. Yeah. And I think that's some of the problem also is that, you know, it's not just the medications. It's also the vaccinations.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, and keep in mind, guys, for those out there that are on SSRIs, you know, I'm not saying you should it be on SSRIs. I think SSRs, yeah, I mean, I think SSRIs definitely can be good for people. I think it can help people. I do think, though, there is a huge problem. I mean, there's a lot of studies that show that, like, we are way over-medicating

our kids. And I think it can potentially lead to what happened in this particular case. We don't know if this kid was on SSRIs. He might just be crazy. But also, you have to think, like, you got to think about the generation we're in. Like, how many parents are taking SSRIs? At the same time, they're actually getting pregnant with their kids. and then our kids are being born.

And so there's just this cycle. But we're also going to talk about, like, is there any anything linking this guy's background to anything? Is there any connection because he did shoot up in and out? There was an employee that died. He shot a Tesla in the parking lot. This happened in Idaho. He did end up killing himself, you know, even though there were multiple, what we call

heroes that were trying to take him down. One guy was an off-duty police officer. And then the other guy was just a badass citizen. Yeah, and he was, and we saw the videos. I was like, you go, boy, because I thought that was amazing. And I think we need more people like that today. And I think that's why it's important to be able to carry guns. Yeah, they actually, someone found his profile on X, or a bunch of people already have now, the guy that had the silenced, the silenced pistol.

And it's so funny because he has all these videos from the past, like, he's a badass, like, you know, gun guy. That's all he does. And he has all these videos of, like, quick draws and doing all this stuff. So when this shit happened, it was like, oh, this is my Super Bowl right now. Yeah. Yeah, this is. I'm finally going to get to use my training. Anyways.

So we do got to go ahead. I want to get into the update. That's just happened a few hours ago. They're going to tell you what they know so far. And then we're going to bring Chad, our one of our listeners that was there around the time this was happening. He was there in all the chaos. And we'll get a, we'll get his perspective on this.

But here you go. Hello, everyone. I'm Jerika Duncan with a breaking news update. Officials are providing. briefing in Twin Falls, Idaho, where a shooter opened fire this weekend at an in-and-out restaurant leaving three people dead and several others injured. Let's listen in. Provide updates just as soon as we are able. First, I want to acknowledge the victims, their family, and anybody impacted by this tragic event. Our thoughts are with them,

and we recognize the fear and concern that this has caused in our community. This remains an act of an ongoing investigation. Our priorities provide the most accurate, information available, correct misinformation, direct victims, families, and witnesses and community members to the proper resources. We understand that there are many questions, and we will try to answer as many of those in time as we can. However, because some details cannot be released at this stage and doing so would compromise our investigation. In review, yesterday at 229 p.m., multiple 911 calls were received by the Twin Falls City Communications Center. Dispatchers could hear screaming and reports of gunshots in the background. Officers from our department,

along with officers from local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies all converged to the incident. Fire and medical personnel from the Twin Falls Fire Department and Madagalli Paramedics also responded. First responders faced what was described as one of the most chaotic instances of law enforcement officer can face in their career. Law enforcement began to search for the suspect as well as assisting medical personnel to the scene safe. and providing first aid and transporting those in need to our local hospital. Our department has been in constant contact with the in-and-out management, and they are actively assisting us in the investigation.

At this time, we can confirm that there are multiple victims. Based on the information currently available, there are three victims that are deceased. Seven others are injured. Two of those patients have been treated and released. Three are in stable condition, and two are in critical. and two are in critical condition. These numbers are preliminary and may be updated

as we continue to work with our medical providers, investigators, and partnering agencies. Out of respect for the victims and their families who have all not been notified at this time, we will not be released in the identities of them today. I want to thank St. Luke's and their medical staff for their assistance and their extreme, extraordinary care during this difficult time.

Now, we know there have been multiple comments online about multiple shooters. We can confirm that there was an off duty state trooper and a citizen who actively engaged the suspect by returning gunfire towards him. We want to take a moment and commend the actions of the off-duty officer and the citizen and their heroic action to stop this incident. We believe their actions helped drive the suspect away from the scene, preventing further casualties. We can confirm that in the minutes after law enforcement arriving and beginning their search for the suspect, we had a second officer-involved shooting. No one was injured that incident and the Twin Falls Police officer involved in that shooting. These actions are now being reviewed by the Jerome Police Department.

More information about that incident will be forthcoming in the days to follow. At this time, we can confirm that the suspect, 24-year-old Chad Williams, is deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Investigators are continuing to review the incident timeline, process evidence, and conduct interviews. detectives are working up on following leads and working with assisting agencies. At this time, we are still working to determine the full set of circumstance in this incident, including the suspect's actions and possible motivations. The Williams family has been notified and they are fully cooperating with law enforcement. Their hearts are also broken during this time.

For those directly impacted, victim services and support services are being actively coordinated. Crisis counselors will be on hand today, until 8 p.m. at Rock Creek Elementary School and we're making arrangements to continue that service throughout the week. We are in the process of working with the FBI to set up a seeking victims website, and we will provide that information as soon as possible. We are asking the public to avoid spreading unverified information. We have seen social media posts identifying the shooter as a gentleman named Amir Manzik. This information is absolutely false. This gentleman has no involvement in this instance. whatsoever. We've also seen reports identifying him as a member of a fire department. This is also completely false. Based on the best information we have at this time, we are confident that Mr. Williams acted alone. If you have information related to this incident, please contact our dispatch center at 208-735-4357. If you have any videos, photos, or digital evidence of this incident, we have established a digital media tip line.

at www.fbi.gov slash Twin Falls shooting. Even the smallest detail may be important to our investigation. We want to recognize the quick response of our first responders, dispatchers, medical personnel, and assisting agencies. Their actions were absolutely critical in securing the scene, providing first aid, and supporting the victims and their families. We do want to highlight that we did have another shooting incident in Twin Falls last night. No injuries were reported in that incident.

We can also confirm that this incident is not related in any way to the in-and-out incident. In light of yesterday's events, we want to assure the community that our law enforcement services remain available. Today and over the coming days, if you request law enforcement assistance, you may be seeing an officer, a deputy, or a trooper from one of our partnering agencies. Today, Mayor Brown has sworn in members from the Meridian Police Department, the Caldwell Police Department, and the Nampa Police Department to assist the Idaho State. state police in patrolling the city of Twin Falls. These officers are here to work alongside our officers and help continue to ensure public safety coverage for our citizens and visitors.

The type of call that we have described here today is one of the worst incidences that law enforcement official or first responder can respond to. I want to tell the citizens in Twin Falls how proud they should be of the men and women of law enforcement and their first responders and how they respond to this incident and the bravery they displayed yesterday. together, our community will get through this. To everyone here in Twin Falls, remain Twin Falls strong, and support each other. At this time, I'd like to introduce Special Agent in Charge, Robert Bowles, with the FBI. Thank you, Chief Hicks.

My name is Robert Bowles. I'm the Special Agent in Charge of FBI Salt Lake City, which covers Idaho and Utah. First, on behalf of the FBI, our hearts go out to the victims. and to everyone affected by yesterday's tragic shooting. To the families who have lost a loved one, we extend our condolences that are deep and heartfelt. There's no adequate words for loss so profound, and we are truly sorry.

The moment we learned what happened yesterday, our special agents in Personnel in Boise and Salt Lake City mobilized immediately. We have committed the full weight of our resources to the Twin Falls Police Department, deploying every investigative and intelligence tool at our disposal. Our evidence response teams and victim services specialists are also on the ground, working tirelessly to support both the investigation and those impacted.

The FBI's Victim Services Division, which administers the Victim Services Response Team, will be arriving in Twin Falls to work cooperatively with our local, state, and federal agencies to provide crisis assistance. All right, so there you go. There's not a whole lot more they're going to talk about in that, yes, they do have some reporter questions. They basically say that they don't have much more information than they just gave. It is interesting. They did have another shooting in the same area, and he actually said second officer involved shooting.

So I'm assuming he is meaning the off-duty officer that was engaging with the suspect was the first officer involved shooting, which sounds like neither the off-duty officer. or the brave citizen actually hit the suspect. It turns out that he ended up killing himself a little bit later or shortly after this all went down. And he also said that there were multiple departments that may respond to calls in the area while they are still investigating this, although they do believe that he acted alone. For whatever reason, they have a feeling that, hey, he acted on. But that's also, you know, I just remember the Idaho four murders when the Idaho or the Moscow

police department came out. I was like, oh, there's no danger to the public, although they had no idea who the person was. Exactly. So, you know, we don't 100% for sure know this guy acted alone. I don't know. And I think the problem, too, is that so many people just don't trust anything anymore when there's a shooting or something's happening. Maybe it's because this, maybe it's because that.

I did want to mention one thing. You know, I've been looking up like theories and just, you know, things that people have been saying or bring into our attention. And the only thing that you can even. even connect right now because obviously they've not released a manifesto. They haven't said anything about his background. What we do know is that on social media yesterday, it started coming out from a lot of people that he was some Muslim that did this.

Yeah, that's what they always want to put it at as a Muslim guy. Oh, it's a Muslim. We got to hate Muslims more. But a lot of times in these shootings, like we've said, it is young white men. Yeah. Well, the big thing is going to be, and this. is what will blow it up or not is will they release the manifesto and what was the reason that he actually did this now we know that he shot i i believe it was a unmanned tesla so there was no one

it was unoccupied it was a tesla in the parking lot of the in and out and he shot multiple rounds through the front windshield of that tesla and then i guess at some point he also had shot an employee in the in and out and was engaging with others in and around the in and out location which is where two other people died. But the only thing that I can kind of think about is, you know, in and out is a pretty decent, not pretty decent. It's a pretty good example, I guess, of a fast food company that is Christian-based, right? So the in and out, they print discrete Bible verses references on its packaging,

for example, like John 316 on soda cups, proverbs references on items. The company has longstanding Christian family ownership. And as president, Lindsay Snyder is openly Christian. He's talked about it many times. He has came out and said a lot of things about Christianity and even talked about how Christians are being persecuted around the world. He's been pretty vocal about that. So, you know, Tesla in and out, what would you think?

I mean, it leads my mind to believe that it was somebody going almost against Republicans. I hate to say that. And I hate to say that word right now. but it just feels like that if it's potentially yeah I mean it is he's shooting out Tesla as you think about Elon Musk and you think about him being in the White House going against you know US aid or US what is it yeah USA yeah yeah and you know working with the Republicans and then this is a Christian restaurant and most Christians are Republicans yeah I mean it just kind of leads your mind to believe oh he

might be against Republicans now here's the thing that I I did I did notice, you know, as I said, the CEO is pretty vocal about being a Christian. And what I did find was he got a lot of backlash and criticism. They actually tried to boycott in and out because when the CEO came out in defense of Israel on multiple occasions, especially right after October 7th happened, but then I think he has been pretty vocal after the fact about the Jews and how, you know, Israel and we must protect Israel. We must do all these things. Or many pro-Palestead Indian groups or just pro-humanitarian groups or pro-Gaza groups. They came out and wanted to boycott in and out because of his stand or stance.

So he was more Israel-based? Well, he was very, he's a very prominent and outspoken person in his defense and support and undying loyalty to Israel and their cause and the Jewish people and their right to exist and all these things. So he's definitely a Zionist, I guess. I mean, yeah, I mean, it sounds like it. But, you know, is at the very least, I can promise you that someone's going to do anything they can to somehow connect this guy to anti-Jews or anti-Israel.

That's just going to happen. And whether or not that's the case or not, I have no idea. We do know at the very least the CEO was a Christian, but I'm just telling you guys what I know about him as far as the stance on that, Palestinian groups are trying to, or pro-Palestin groups are trying to cancel in and out. But it's not just that. There's been people from the left for a long time that has tried to cancel in and out because of the fact they print Bible verses and there are a pretty old.

openly Christian company. Or it could be the fact that he just picked a restaurant out of the random. And just went and shot it up. I mean, who knows? But why was he shooting up a Tesla out of any car in a parking lot? Well, here's the thing you got to think about, too, though, is like if you are a younger guy and you are going to go and shoot up, like you want to do a mass shooting, you want to kill people.

Like you want, I just don't think most people go to random places. They want to make a big message in most cases. in most cases. And that's why they usually leave behind manifestos. They want their name to blow up all over media. Oh, and they shave their little bullets now and put little names on them and stuff. Well, yeah, but, you know, or yeah, they engrave or carve. And but, you know, so we don't know, but at the very least, I'm sure there will be a reason

why he did this. And they're definitely going to use it politically. Right now, the Republicans obviously don't typically go against the Second Amendment. That's usually the left, but we'll see what happens with that. but what we're going to do now is we're going to go ahead and bring on Chad he's one of our listeners and he was kind of right around this area i'll let him tell you his experience in what he witnessed all right chad welcome to the show uh we had talked last night briefly and this was literally right after this happened i think you had posted our telegram and you were posting uh some pictures

and videos and and then also kind of explaining what happened i had not even heard of this shooting yet and then we went on a telegram live last night and chad came in and he was like dude i was kind of all around this when it happened. Chad, tell us, first of all. And welcome to the show. And welcome to the show. And thanks for being a listener. And thanks for being a part of our telegram.

You live in Idaho. How far did you live from the location of the shooting? I actually live in Twin Falls, the city that it happened in. Okay. And so you, I think you had said you had taken your kids, right? Yeah. I had my son with me. I have three kids and my son was with me at the time.

So tell me what happened from the time you leave your house, like, and by the way, do you, are you a firearm owner? Do you care about firearms? Yes. Okay. Yes. Full supporter of the second amendment. Okay. So tell me what happened. You decided to go to in and out and what time did you go, by the way, and all that. So about 1230, me and my son decided to get ready to go to have some lunch. My wife had taken my middle daughter to a pool party with her and her friends. And then my oldest child at the time. had gone to her aunt's house. So it was just me and my son. He's my youngest. Only guys in the house are going out for lunch. And he comes out in some old sweats. And I was like, oh, let's go grab some, let's go do some stuff, get you some, you know, new clothes and stuff.

Just do us guys for the day. Yeah. And so I went and got some stuff for him. And he was wanting to go to Wendy's for lunch. And I was like, Wendy's, come on. And so in and out had just opened like a week ago. We went there at the family right when it opened. And it was okay.

I'm not a big fan of fast food burger places. But I was like, let's go to in and out. You know, let's go inside rather than go through the drive-thru. Yeah. And we got done with the clothes shopping right around 1 o'clock, 115, and we went to in and out. I actually have the receipt still. I had went through the register at about 145. Wow.

And what time did this shooting happen, by the way? I believe I looked at my phone. I had called my wife at about 2.30. And from what I've heard that the first shots had started ringing out around 215. So we had eaten and we had just left. And right next door is a strip mall and has a pet. smart and uh ross and dick sporting goods inside it and i had decided to take him over to ross uh to go look at some shoes you know really that's the only thing that we were going to go look

for is for shoes and we had gotten up to the register and uh we're about ready to hit one of the registers because we're still in line and i looked out the window and noticed a but a bunch of people running and i was like what what's going on and then you saw i saw in and out employees running across a parking lot hopping into other vehicles that were passing by and to just peel in away. And at that same time, people were running into the store, including in and out employees, saying everybody run, there's a shooter. And you didn't hear any shots in there at all, I don't guess. No, no shots at all, honestly.

And we're probably maybe 100 yards away from the in and out. So we're pretty close. So I'm a bit of a prepared person, you know. I've talked with my kids and stuff about situations like this just because the way, you know, the days are going. And there's a thing that I do with the kids. I place my hand on the back of their neck and put them in front of me. Rather than dragging them behind me, I can direct them to where I want them to go if there was an emergency. I had instantly grabbed my son.

And people were still kind of like what's going on just standing there. And I don't know. I just had this weird feel. And I grabbed him by the back of the neck. And I directed him back to the back of the store. And everybody started kind of like understanding what was going on. And as we were heading back there, I was telling people, everybody get to the corners, get to the corners. And we get to the back of the store.

And everybody just kind of piled up not knowing what's going on, mixed between, you know, shoppers from Ross, people from the parking lot. employees from in and out and it was just kind of congested back by the bathroom so I had pulled him to the side over into the corner and we sat there for a good about 10 minutes

and the employees over the intercom had said that they had locked the front doors the shelter in place in the back and that's where everybody was located and it was kind of a shock situation on it obviously you know

Yeah, not everybody, now not everybody expects to be in a situation like that until it actually happens. Mm-hmm. And so, and you, and you had said that, I have to mention this because you said this place has only been open like a short time, right? Do you say like a week? Yeah. Yeah. And it's only been about a week since it's opened. Wow.

And how did it? I wonder if that has anything to do with it. That's just weird. I have a little bit of insight on that. Oh, let's hear that. I want to hear what you have to say. So Twin Falls. is a fairly small place in southern Idaho.

It's one of the major cities in southern Idaho. You got Boise, you have Idaho or Twin Falls, and then you have Idaho Falls, Pocatello area. But we are pretty small. You know, the population in Twin Falls is 50 to 60,000 with the surrounding cities, bumping it up to about 70 to 80,000. So we're pretty small. And I would say the,

the older community as far as the people who've grown up here, tend to go against the new things that come into Twin. Yeah. So obviously. What do you mean they go against the new things coming in? Like why and how or what? Our city is really not set up for a lot of foot traffic, if that makes sense. Or a lot of car traffic.

You know, we have Highway 93 that comes straight through Twin. Then Blue Lakes is a four-lane, you know, street that hits straight. straight through the middle. And with people moving in from out of stay, we have, we have vacationers and stuff coming through. Gotcha. It's kind of difficult sometimes to get through town, especially if you've grown up in a small town.

And then all of a sudden, there's a bunch of traffic going on. It's kind of a pain sometimes. Right. And at the very beginning, when there was word that was an in and that was coming through, a lot of people were against it. And actually, from what I understand, the count city council had denied their permits to bring an in and out into twin. And it was actually the location was the big situation. The location is where the old outback steakhouse used to be right there by the bridge.

It's right there next to the visitor center. The traffic there could be pretty, pretty brutal. if there's a car accident, even at that intersection or on the bridge, the bridge is shut down for an hour. And then the backup is crazy because that's the main way to come in from the north. The only other way to get into town is a 30 to 45 minute drive around. Yeah. So it's kind of a pain of the butt. And so, and that's what I was going to ask too is, you know, is your area mostly Republican?

Is a Democrat? Like what is kind of the political situation there? So I would say it's a lot of conservative situations. It's an LDS heavy area. Okay. But from experience, I am not a Christian. I would be considered a pagan in the Christian eyes. But the area is very welcoming.

Yeah. We have a moss. We have a moss in town. We have Baptist church. We have all sorts of religions around here. We have a high Hispanic population. We have immigrants from overseas, Bosnian immigration. It's very diverse here and it's very open.

And we don't see a lot of religious conflict. We do have protests here and there, but they're pretty small and they're pretty unenventful. Like, you know, we respect each other around here. Yeah, that's awesome. And so did you like, so you were in the back of Ross and then how long were you in Ross until you could actually leave and did you, was there a huge law enforcement presence and all that stuff? So when we got to the back corner, obviously people kind of started panicking when they

finally realized what was going on. We had the employees kind of talking about what was going on. They were on phones. We had employees crying and stuff like that. And a mother with her sister, which her sister was roughly in her 20s. And then the mother's kids, she had four kids with her as well, were back there. And we were all kind of sitting there. And one of the employees walked by us on the next aisle over and was bawling and crying and talking very loudly.

She was right next to one of the gals that got shot in the chest. Oh, my gosh. And so I kind of politely went over there to console her. And but I was also was trying to kind of keep it calm because it was starting to work up everybody around us. Obviously, the kid's situation was a big thing. Yeah. The mother was kind of panicking and I kind of consoled her and had her calm down a little bit because it was freaking out her kids. And so at that time I had started.

So these people actually were at the in and out and ran to Ross and you were consoling them. Yeah. Yeah. So they had just seen it. Oh, wow. employees, yeah. And so I had started grabbing pillows off the shelf to hand to the kids to kind of get a little squishy, you know, kind of have something for them to hold on to and console themselves. And we sat there for probably a good hour before anything really started happening into the store.

And about an hour passed. And all of a sudden, we heard yelling from the front, everybody to the right of the store. And it was very scary. We didn't know if it was police. We didn't know if it was an employee saying, hey, everybody move. But at that time, there was a employee like break area right next to us. And employees were from Ross were coming in and out of that area. But it was a locked door, the pin pad door.

So you can only get through a pin pad. And I had watched a couple employees go through there. And I had learned the pinpad because like I said, I'm a prepared person. I want a means of escape or means of security. Yeah, for sure. And when we heard that person scream from the front, I had ran over to the door and put the pin in and opened the door, and I started just ushering everybody that I can see into that room.

I had handed my son off to the gal with the four kids, and I said, please take him. And we started ushering people into the room. And unfortunately, that area had no means of escape. It was literally just like a locked room. Yeah. It was fairly small, and we had probably about 30 people in there. And it started kind of settling out, and one of the employees came in and said that was a police officer asking us to move to the other side of the store because the one side that they were heading to had exit to the back side of the building and a rooftop axis.

So that's how they were able to get sniper points up on top of Ross and have access to the back. Wow. And through this whole situation, I was in contact with my sister. I had called my mom, had called my wife to let them know what was going on. And my mom had called my sister. And my sister at that time was she has a police scanner. And so she was listening to the police scanner and relaying the information back to me. So that way I know what was kind of going on.

Yeah. So at this time, did you think there were two shooters, one shooter? Did you know anything like what was going on at all? So I was getting pictures. I was getting information. And through this situation, I feel like the police department had felt that the good Samaritans that were shooting back at the shooter was part of the situation. So at that time, I thought there was three shooters.

And the information that I was getting was, is they had gotten one into custody and two escaped. one of them they said that i got from my information went to the mall and then another one took off towards the freeway to the north and the car had broken down and they were searching for him on foot so there was a lot of mixed mix information i was obviously looking online on facebook for the for the police department facebook getting updates from there you know we had the the rant raves facebook page that it was blowing up you know he had a bunch of people putting on him out in So you have to kind of take everything with a grand assault, you know, you can't really believe everything, but you also kind of want to know what people are seeing and what people are saying.

Yeah, and I wanted to highlight this too because, you know, I want to highlight this for people because it may very well, at least slightly prepare you if you're ever in the situation. But, you know, when you said that you guys were all kind of piled in corners and you're kind of doing your thing, I actually think it was not a horrible idea that you went in the room, even though, you know, it was a small room. How big was the room? Did you have room to get away from out or out in front of the door? No. No. The aisles were fairly close together. I don't know if you've been in Ross, but they, those aisles are barely big enough to move past another cart. Yeah. So and the room was close and putting clothes out. Yeah. So they're pretty, pretty narrow. The room was roughly,

I want to say it was probably 12 feet by 20. Was the room, but the room was in the back of the store, right? Yeah, yeah. The room was in the back of the store. The only reason why I wanted to go in there is because the only way to get in that room was a pass coat. Yeah. Yeah. There was a small window. If someone wanted to get back there and maybe, you know, bust the window out to open the door that way, I still have a means of something between me and that person, you know. I'm not a big guy, but I'm fairly, I'm fairly capable of taking care of myself. And so, plus there's children back there. and an elderly and people just kind of panicking back there. And so it was kind of like that, hey, this is my only means of security. Let's get in there. And so everybody, everybody calmed down. We got information that the police officer was the one who yelled into the store so that way they can get back there.

And there's a office back there as well. It's just a small office about the same size as a regular bathroom, a household bathroom. and they had security cameras. So I was able to kind of stand by the front, by the door that was locked and peek into the office and watch the cameras. And you can see police department up in front of the store, outside of the store. Oh, wow. They're running in and out. There's employees up there kind of directing them where to go on certain things to kind of help them get back and be fast about it.

We had gotten word. I was going to just say real quick, I think that is. the safest place you probably could have been in Ross is in this like room that no one else can get into because as a school teacher, that was our first response. If we ever had an intruder that goes into the school, the first thing you do is you get all your kids into the bathroom where you can lock them if you have a bathroom in your classroom. Yeah. And also keep in mind too, you know, when you're in this store, this big Ross store and you're in corners or you're in just you're out and about in the store itself. I mean, part of the problem is it's like if the shooter does. does enter the store, he doesn't just start immediately firing. And there's so many people around, you don't know who the shooter is and who isn't.

I mean, you don't know, you don't know what kind of weapon they have. I think it's a good, I think it was a good idea that you, um, you know, put yourself in that room. And especially if there were still a lot of people outside of that room. Right. You know, that's usually obviously probably where the shooter's going to go before he tries to open a locked door. And obviously you knew the shooter wasn't in there when you were letting people into the room.

To me, you sound like a modern day hero that you are taking charge. I want to call myself a hero and I want to I wanted to take that personally as a hero situation. You know, I have kids. I'm a prepared person. And when I see someone's needing help, that's just a human thing, you know? That's that's not wanting to take credit to be a hero or anything like that. You know, a lot of people kind of look past being prepared in situations like that. Yeah.

You know, for sure. When before we even got into the room, I noticed people were still. kind of cruising those back aisles just kind of looking at things. And I don't know if it was to kind of keep their mind off the situation or if they just weren't taking it seriously. But it kind of shocked me. And I was like, wow, you know, a lot of people aren't prepared for things like this. They don't take the severity of the situation.

Yeah. Now, did you, now, you said you have guns, but you did not. What is the law there, by the way, as far as firearms go? Is it open carry or? Complete open carry, conceal carry. Okay, I got you. They have, they have, restrictions when it comes to suppressors and stuff like that, you have to pay a tax stamp for that.

But when it comes to like conceal carry, as long as it's not in federal buildings, schools, banks, hospitals, obviously the normal, you can't bring an firearm into place. You can conceal carry wherever you want. Yeah. And I guess, so were you carrying that day? So normally I'm a very prepared person. My family calls me the wacko prepper. I love it. I do like my firearms.

When I go to work, I carry a bag that has like a charger and a flashlight and some extra stuff. Carry my lunch in it. But I usually carry a firearm in there. And when I'm out and about with my family, I usually can still carry. But that day yesterday, it was supposed to be 105 degrees. And I actually didn't want to go anywhere. The wife and the two daughters were going to go do things. Me and my son were going to stay home and play video games together and just chill.

But I kind of, I don't know, I didn't want to be lazy for some reason. And so going to be comfortable, I put some gym shorts on and a fishing shirt just to stay cool. And I left everything at home. And go figure the one day you really want to have it, you don't have it and you carry it all the time. But me and my wife had a conversation about that yesterday and kind of opened my eyes a little bit on that. So conceal carry, yeah, it protects me, but it also can put me in danger as well. Because if I were to brandish my firearm to protect myself and have it out while is in the store, it could have caused a lot of conflicts with the people who are scared in the store as well.

You know? Yeah. I mean, I would have still rather had my farm for sure. But also keep in mind, you know, it's one of those things like there's so many people that do typically carry or, you know, whatever. And then it's just always seems like there's so many people that the day they don't carry or whatever. It's like the day that something happens.

It's kind of always like, you know, you hope you never need it, but you better have it if you do need it. And yeah. And I just wonder if I just wonder if I. I would be one of those people that were caring and then something happens. And I'm like, oh, I'm freaking out. I'm going into the room. Forget that.

I'm not going after them, you know, because it's scary. It's scary. It is scary. I can tell you, I thought I would be prepared for a scenario like that. I've watched countless of videos of how to clear rooms. I've watched countless videos of how to protect myself, what to do in situations like this or that you know i've i've i've i've listened to your guys's podcast and situations i've listened to multiple other podcasts on on on and stuff like this but honestly i don't i wasn't

prepared yeah i don't i don't think you can be prepared until you're in the situation right you know yeah i think i think someone had said you know you can you can practice and prepare all day long but until bullets are actually flying over your head that's when you're going and realize, oh, shit, I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was because your adrenaline rush and dump. You have a fight or flight, you know, and it's, yeah, and depending on how you feel in that situation is going to be, you know, determine if you survive or not typically. But, you know, thank God, there was not a gunman that came in the store because as that, you know, as you get close proximity with a gunman, you know, and especially if you had a weapon on you,

you know, in many cases, most people are going to have to use it because, you know, you're in life for death situation. And the gunmen could go after you because you have. add the gun too. And it's just, you know, at that point, it's like, dang. But that's also putting yourself in that situation. Like, yeah. You know, I've been in that fight or flight situation. And a lot of times I have the flight feeling where I like freeze. Well, and, you know, also too, you know, that's why I even here, because, you know, here, Chad, we have the same thing. We have the concealed or open carry.

You don't have to have a license. And the interesting thing about it is I always see so many people that are open carrying now and I'm just like you know I don't think these people realize like you're the main target if there is a shooter or even if there is a shooter say that there's a criminal in a store that wants to do something they don't have access to a firearm there's a video there's actually a really good video I don't know if you saw this video of that white country boy dude that was in this gas station at night he had his firearm on his side and these three or four young black kids that came in they look like gang members and shit and they whatever and one of them just grabs this firearm office office um oh

out of his hoyser. Was it a vape store or something? No. It wasn't a vape store. This was just a gas station. They grab his firearm out of his pants. And, you know, he tries. He's like, man, come on, give him my gun back or whatever.

They walk out of the store. This guy follows them to try to get his gun back and they shoot and kill him. That's crazy. With his own gun. I have not seen that video. Yeah, it's on X. And I'm not saying that you were in that fight or flight because obviously you didn't have a gun that day. And like you and your wife were saying,

it was probably better that you didn't in the circumstances because I think what you did was hero. What is the word heroic? Because you did get all those people that were running and put them into the room and try to calm them down. And I think, you know, God puts you in a place for a reason. I know you said you're not religious, but, you know, I don't know if you believe in God or not. But I think God puts you in a place for a reason. And that was your reason.

Yeah. growing up, I've never been that person to walk away from helping someone. A lot of stuff happened in my life, and I've always been kind of that person that's always been there to help. I appreciate you call me a hero, but I'm not a hero, you know. I don't want to be labeled as a hero. I just, I want more people to understand that it doesn't take a lot to help out another human being. Yeah. In situations like that,

some people just need a few words or a hug or or something to calm them down, you know, because we didn't know what was going on. Honestly, at the very beginning, I didn't know if maybe in, because we were getting worried that there was possibly more shooters. I didn't know if there was another shooter that ran this way. Yeah. Went into the store to go hide from the cops. I did not know, you know.

And so like, I was on guard. I was definitely on guard. just kind of looking at certain people, watching what they're doing, how they're reacting. Yeah, you've got to be. You have to be in that situation. I mean,

I'm one of those husbands that, and I'm sure you, Chad, can relate to this. When you go into a restaurant, you have to sit in your certain spot. Yes. And if I sit in the wrong place, Chad's like, move.

I have to see the outside of the door. Yeah. My wife, my wife hates it. My kids hate it because they always fight to sit next to which parent, you know and I'm like nope that's my spot and they'll be like well dad I want to sit next to you and mom I'm all that's my spot yeah no I'm the same way because you gotta be prepared like that I'm

always looking at like exits you have to be aware of your surroundings at all times yeah you can't ever be don't ever let your guard down especially these days yeah yeah and so have you heard anything from like locals or anything about like motives or I mean because there's nothing right now that they're saying but I don't know if anybody has has been saying anything through the grapevine around there. Did anybody know him in this area that you know of or anything like that? So as far as information that I've got, his name is Chad Williams. Yeah. ironic, right?

You know, Chad talking to a chat about a chat. Yeah, exactly. He was a Navy. He's in the Navy. He's 24 years old. That's what I've gotten off a line. I haven't, you know, like I said, take it with Grant Salt. There's been a lot of information going out pinpointing.

and put names to certain people in the situation. But as far as motives-wise, I don't think that they have anything out there just yet. You know, there's speculation. I have my, you know, theories on the situation. So what are your theories? So with the in-and-out situation, I think personally a lot of,

because a lot of people were against it, maybe this, and I don't even know if he's a local or if he's just traveling through or if he's from one of the outside cities. We only have a National Guard base here in Twin. The closest military base is Mount Home or Boise. So I don't know if he's a local person. I don't recognize him.

He's a little bit younger than I am. But I think there's a lot of chaos kind of going on over there when it comes to traffic and foot traffic, you know. And maybe he was just a person that was angry and wanted to, you know, either be suicide by cop or do something drastic like that. And he noticed that that area was a key point and key area that he can do that. Yeah. Yeah, because it's surprising that you said that it just opened and then he targeted that restaurant. Yeah.

I mean, that's the first for me to know. they had to petition in order to open up that location because like I said, they got denied. Yeah. And the Outback Steakhouse that was there actually closed because In and Out and Out had bought the property from them. Oh, wow. So the Outback Steakhouse was still open. And a lot of people were mad because it was going to cause a lot of traffic jam, which in and out did their research. and it hasn't actually been too bad, to be honest.

Yeah. Yeah. And I said this before you came on, but I was like, you know, the fact that in and out is a predominantly Christian company, not predominantly. I mean, they make it very obvious and they print these Bible verses and certain package in and, you know, their CEO's a big time Christian. But like I said, before you came on. Chad, did you see any of those printed items on your food when you went there that day? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Me and my son, instead of getting soda. as we ended up getting milkshakes and on the bottom is a Bible verse and on the bottom rim. Yeah. Yeah. That's my only thing. But, you know, it's like I told Cherry, I said, if there's a way that the media can use this guy shooting up and out, they're going to, trust me, you'll know it very soon. As soon as they get all this shit together and figure out what their plan is, you know. And like it said.

It's going to be someone attacking a Christian business and construing something that someone's going to say something on the lines of his ethnicity or his religious belief, it's going to be misconstrued at in some point. Yeah. And they also said, or not they also said, that was me that said it before you gave mine. But I also said earlier that, you know, it's interesting too because the CEO has been pretty vocal about, you know, the pro-Israel, even after October 7th, all that stuff. There were pro-Palestinian groups that were boycotting in and out for a while. So it'll be it'll be interesting to see what happens with all this. Yeah.

Chad, Did you hear anything about this Admir people person? Amir? Yeah, that people were pointing fingers to and saying, you know, Islam and all that stuff. He was Muslim and that's what they were trying to say on social media yesterday. And then that's the police said in no way is that guy connected whatsoever.

And apparently this person is a real person. Yeah, but I'm just wondering if he heard the rumors since he lives there. No, no. So I haven't heard any rumors of, of. of any other people other than who's they released. Now, there was a few police reports and police calls last night to domestic situations and a few other locations in Twin. Yeah, and there was a shooting we heard not long after this one.

Yeah, there was another residential shooting at a home and that cops were called to. Do you guys normally getting shootings like that? No. So I grew up here in Twin. born and raised. My parents were, my dad was born and raised here. A lot of my family on my dad's side lives here. This has only been kind of crazy stuff like this.

This has only been going on for roughly, I want to say five, maybe, you know, 10 years at most. It's just been kind of getting worse and worse when it comes to, you know, shootings or or shots fired or this or that. Yeah. It was right at the end of the school year. I want to say it was May. My daughter had actually called us one day and said that there was SWAT a block away from our house. And there was an incident at a house with the situation and the cops ended up shooting that guy. Wow.

Yeah, well, you should come visit the old Spartanburg area sometime. You want to cease some shootings. Well, I'm sure. That is scary because, you know, they don't normally experience that. Yeah, exactly. And now they're experiencing it a lot. Yeah. And it makes you wonder like what's going on with the communities.

We're a very quiet community. There's not a lot of things that go on, you know. Yeah. There's not a lot of conflict. You know, when the, when the mosque came into town, you know, a few people were upset, but we still allowed them to build. You know, they have their right to their religion. Yeah. And stuff like that, you know, there's not a lot of conflict.

You have these kids out here that feel like they want to be gangbangers or something like that. So you have these small time groups that like to tag their name on places. But other than that, it's a quiet place. Well, they be tagging up. They're potatoes. They draw them pictures of potatoes with spray paint. I'm throwing down potato. Don't be a tack on my potatoes, man.

But that's what's crazy is these young kids are the ones that are directing. all the violence at people. Yeah, kids are scary nowadays. Yeah. You know, like teenagers to like, you know, 20s. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I was actually thinking about that today.

Just kind of looking through, you know, and trying to remember all the things that have happened, you know, that over the last couple years, you know, with the Charlie Kirk assassination. Yeah. With the Donald Trump, a temp assassination,

with all the, you know, all this major stuff, it's pretty narrowed down to, a certain individual as a young white male. Yeah, it is. We literally talked about that. Before we brought you on. Yeah.

Yeah. And I talked about the SSRIs, you know, because I grew up on SSRIs and there, I, you know, there was a time and I'm 41, but there was a time where I was almost about to kill myself. And in a large part, because I was young and I was on all these damn, you know, these medications, but I don't know. I mean, I think a lot is wrong. I think the mass influx of social media and like I said, everybody. just trying to get you to take a side on this or this or an ideology is the big one.

And it's on all sides now. It's not just Republicans. I mean, sorry, it's not just Democrats. It's Republicans, too. And there's everybody in between. So I think that's a big problem when it comes to the social media and everything. These kids, and I have three young kids, but they're, you know, they're getting older. I have an 8-year-old, a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old.

And my 14-year-old over the last year has just had so many issues with social media. I'm sure. You know, I don't, we, when we went into the, the phone situation for the kids, we, we laid some ground rules. And with the oldest, we were giving her a little bit more leniency with TikTok and Snapchat, because that's, that's what her friends do. You know, we don't want to exclude her, but we want to still at least monitor it. And it was just destroying her mental, mental state. She was crying all the time because of this or that through social media. She was always depressed and eventually we ended up having to take that away from her.

Wow. And limiting her on YouTube and just texting, honestly. And she has a time limit on YouTube on how many videos she can watch or this or that. And she can listen to Spotify for music and text her friends. But we ended up taking Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat away just because of the, the mental stress that was putting her through. And I think the problem is there's not more parents like you that are willing to take those away because when you take it away, you have to give your child more attention.

Yeah. It's the babysitter for the kids. Yeah. I mean, I can't even tell you how many parents I see nowadays. And it's like if you look at the parent and look at their kid, what is their kid doing? They're literally five, six, seven, eight, nine year olds. They're all on screens and their parents are doing whatever to hell they want to do. and their kids are just locked in to whatever is on that screen.

I will be honest, you know, there is, there's occasions that we are that parent, you know. Well, everybody is. Yeah, that's my point. I mean, you almost can't help but not be. It's like your babysitter for 15 minutes, 30 minutes or whatever. It makes, you know, it makes it easier when you go to dinner and your kid doesn't want to sit there and listen, you know, it's like, oh, here's a screen. You go for it. Right.

You know, but for the most part, you know, my youngest son, he has a cell phone. He's eight years old. He does have a cell phone. The only reason why he has a cell phone was because it was cheaper to buy two clients than it was for one. Right. Family plan. Yeah. And so, but with him, like honestly right now, he doesn't even know where it's at.

I don't even know where it's at. He lost it. Man, all his girls are probably wondering why he ain't hitting them back. I have my daughter. She had a phone like I think kindergarten in our first grade. Like I made sure she had a phone because I wanted her to be safe at school too. Like I wanted to know. I was a school teacher and I wanted to know if something is going on and I can't get to my kid, I want to know what's going on.

That was another thing too was it's not a big town, but I'm an electrician. So I'm out of a city pretty often. And my wife, she's a nursing assistant. And so she's pretty busy at work most of the time. So we want a means of contact for our kids. But we also, I have Google family on all three of their phones. So I have GPS tracking and all that type of stuff for them. So that way, if anything were to happen, you know, I can just look up at that phone

and see their last location. Yeah. I still have it for my 24-year-old. Yeah. And my wife and most of my family and my kids as well, they have, so they have the Google family plan. And then they also have Life 360 on their phones for their mom. Yeah, that's what we use.

And all my siblings, all her siblings, our parents. parents or cousins and stuff like that. We all have that life 360. So that way, you know, we kind of have a tabs on everybody. Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't. I don't have 360. I don't have means of trends or of tracking.

That's just a paranoid person of me. Yeah, for sure. Well, man, your story is, I mean, it's pretty crazy. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad to do not come into the Ross building. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, but that's, it's an important lesson, I guess, this mentally.

And it'll, you know, at the very least, it'll help you prepare for if you ever have to go through it again. And maybe you never will. Hopefully you never will. But I hope I don't. As of right now, personally, my mental state, I'm okay. My son, surprisingly, he's, he's doing relatively okay too. But it's also you got to think about the people who care for you. Right now, my wife had to work last night.

and she had to work a double today. And she's texting me and she's saying that she's not okay, you know, because my phone was dying. I didn't charge my phone the night before. So I only had like 10% on my phone. So I couldn't communicate with her through the whole situation. Dang. She was sitting at home.

I was just texting her. I'm okay periodically. So that way she knew I was okay because I was getting information for my sister. So I didn't want to waste the battery life on a phone call. And so it's the people who care about you. You got to think about as well who's really affected about this. Absolutely. For sure.

Because I would be freaked out. My husband was in that situation with my kid. You know, my son. Oh, my God. And I couldn't reach you barely. Yeah. And that's scary. It's really scary.

It is. It is. And yeah, it's just the, it's a very traumatic situation. And no matter what stage you're in, whether you're right there in the situation or you're close to it or or or something like that, you know, it affects everybody differently, but it still affects people, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I, like I said, when you told me last night, I was like, damn, that's crazy.

And I not a, the weird thing is mainstream media is not talking a ton about it. Like I said, I think that we're going to find out more about this as the days go on. And I did want to also mention, Chad. I don't know because you would mention that you're not really Christian or you're, you know, religious, I guess maybe. But Tuesday, which is just a couple days from now, we're actually going to have, I think it's going to be an awesome episode because we have this guy that went blind from type one diabetes. And since he went blind from type one diabetes, he had began having nightly night terrors like vivid, horrible night terrors to where it was like Satan was taken over his body. and it wasn't just night terrors. It was often, I believe, during the day, all of this.

So he had went, he wasn't, I think he wasn't very religious, if I hear this correctly. He went, I guess, to someone directed him to an exorcist at one point in time. And through that process, he actually got over it. And they believe he was, he was, what is it called? God, Amati, what is the word possessed? Yeah, they believe he was possessed. Because he was blind? Yeah, well, I don't know exactly why, but it didn't start until he went blind.

And now he is an exorcist himself. And he is a pretty renowned exorcist, actually. Yeah, it's just crazy because going back to Telegram how we found Chad, how Chad found us, you know, we have a person in our group that is legally blind. Yeah, from type 1 diabetes. And his name is lucid. And, you know, he goes through the same thing. He's called lucid dreams because that's only a way he can see things. is in his dreams.

Yeah. And it does. And it does. There's something. And Lucid could probably better explain this, which we still have not got lucid on the show. And I think we maybe should, especially kind of around this show, around this next show. But yeah, Lucid says once you go blind, there's a lot of things that happen to your body that you

tap into almost that you wouldn't have normally ever done. Yeah. You're taking one sense away and heightened in the others. Yeah. Yeah. So there's going to be a lot of questions. Crazy that you say that. So I am a religious person, but I'm not a Christian religion.

Oh, got you. Yeah, that's how I am. Chad, welcome to my club. Welcome to my club. I do believe in a higher power, you know. Yes. But I don't, I don't, I prefer not to put a name to it, you know. So, I mean, I do my own personal style type of praying, you know, just, just a quick little, you know, a little prayer for myself.

But I don't go to church. I was baptized LDS. I do believe in supernatural. That was a big thing when I was a kid with supernatural stuff. Yeah. But it's also crazy that you say talking about diabetes. I can tell you they both have gotten diabetes or gotten blind due to diabetic retinopathy. Yeah, I think that's what it was.

Yeah. Yeah. My dad, he passed away in 2025 in February of 2025. I'm sorry. Actually on Valentine's Day. He passed away due to diabetes. He had diabetes from the age of 12 years old on up. And he's had everything under the sun to happen to him due to his diabetes.

So it's kind of crazy that you say that kind of linked the, you know, it's kind of a bit of a link when you said that to me. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited to listen to that. Yeah, it's going to be a very interesting show. My dad had type 2 diabetes and that's how I believe started having strokes and heart attacks and you name it. Yeah. But it's the type 1 diabetes people.

That's the ones that are like basically born with it. Yeah. Yeah. My dad had diabetic retinopathy and he ended up being able to have surgery in his eyes to get some of his vision back. He had kidney failure. He had kidney failure in 2012 that started and ended up getting a double transplant for a kidney and a pancreas. Then he, after a few years, his pancreas kind of, his new one kind of went bad and went back to having diabetes. then probably roughly around 2023 is when his kidney started going bad.

And by the time 2025 came around, he was back on dialysis. 2023 was also the year he had a few heart attacks. And then 2024, he had another set of heart attacks and ended up having to do triple bypass. God. He went through it. Yeah. Yeah.

that that diabetes it wrecks you yeah it's you pretty bad it does it'll be interesting it'll be very interesting you hear this guy's story Tuesday because i'm excited there's a lot of things i want to ask about that yeah it's it's diabetes is isn't is no joke it destroys a human's body yeah it does it does absolutely well chad we really appreciate you coming on man and and giving us your story and and definitely stay in touch i know you're in our telegram and for those that are not a part of our telegram we do have a telegram all you got to do is just download it from the app store or whatever phone you have. You have the Android phone or the Obama phone.

There's a way you can do it, I think, on Obama phone as well, right? But yeah, go in there. We do not nightly lives. We do like one or two lives a week usually. And we always talk about everything that's going on. That's usually where sometimes I hear it first, just like Chad did last night. I was like, that's the first time I had heard about it once it happened. So it's a good way to communicate with us very quickly and not just with us, but other listeners.

And so definitely going down. that, Chad, thank you again for coming on, man. We really appreciate it. Yeah, no, thank you guys. But guys, that's going to do it for this episode. We did just want to talk about the shooting because mainstream media is not really covering a lot. And I think that over the course of days or weeks, we're probably going to find out something

and some political purpose is going to be used from this shooting. We just have to wait and see what it is because I'm sure that he probably had a manifesto like we were talking about earlier. People don't usually just go and shoot up stuff without some recent. in behind it or at the very least they want you to know why they did it they have a purpose they have a mission they have this ideology that led him to this

this is usually what we see could he just be crazy yeah potentially but for some reason he chose in and out and he also wanted to shoot a Tesla so we'll see what happens with that is he a lefty is he whatever is he you know anti-Israel

anti-Christian we don't know but we will probably soon find out but guys that's going to do it for this episode this is U equals trouble by Emmy. Till next time, we love you, peace out. Peace out.