Pressure Saves Lives: Lessons from the Twin Falls In-N-Out Attack

By Jason Perry, Founder and CEO, Trident Shield

Saturday afternoon, August 1. Twin Falls, Idaho. The new In-N-Out on Blue Lakes Boulevard had been open for one week. Families in booths. Workers in red aprons and paper hats. A line of cars wrapped around the drive-thru.

At about 2:30, a 24-year-old with a rifle opened fire.

Ashley Garibay was 23 years old. Dale Schultz was 66. Christopher Claunch was 59. They were murdered at a burger stand on a Saturday afternoon. Seven more people were shot and survived.

Here is what else happened and it is the part every pastor, head of school and security director in America needs to burn into memory. A citizen in the drive-thru line drew a handgun and started shooting back. An off-duty Idaho State Police trooper did the same. The killer, who seconds earlier owned that parking lot, suddenly had rounds coming at him. He stopped hunting. He ran. He wanted victims, not a fight, and when the fight came to him, he fled the scene and took his own life.

The Twin Falls police chief said it plainly: "We believe these actions drove the suspect from the scene and prevented further casualties." The county sheriff called those two men true heroes. He is right. That is exactly what they are.

You will notice I did not name the killer. He gets nothing from me. His motive is still under investigation. The lesson is not.

Pressure Changes Everything

Active killers are predators and predators pick soft targets. They plan around compliance. They expect screaming, running, hiding and people who freeze. What they do not plan for is incoming fire.

The moment somebody puts pressure on an attacker, the entire event changes. He stops being a hunter and becomes the hunted. Now he needs cover. Now he has to move. Now he has to survive. Every second he spends reacting to pressure is a second he is not murdering innocent people. In an event where the difference between three dead and thirty dead is measured in seconds, that math is everything.

And pressure does not always mean a gun. A locked and barricaded door is pressure. A fire extinguisher to the face is pressure. A pair of scissors to the throat is pressure. A room full of adults who decided in advance that a killer will have to go through them is pressure. In Twin Falls, it was two armed men who refused to wait for somebody else to act. In your building, it will be whatever your people are trained and willing to do.

And be careful who you let teach your people. There are well-intentioned voices in the church security world right now telling congregations to never barricade and to always run. That is insanity and it will get people killed. Barricading, escaping and defending all have their time and place in an active shooter event, and the right call depends on far too many variables for anyone to hand you a blanket statement. Barricading is an extremely valuable skill that could save your life against an active shooter, a home invasion or domestic violence. Running is a fine option when you have cover or concealment to generate distance and a clear path. A kindergarten classroom does not outrun a rifle across an open field. A packed sanctuary does not pour through two doors in ten seconds. In attack after attack, killers skip locked doors and take the open path. The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission put it in writing in 2015 and the record still holds. No active shooter has ever breached a locked classroom door. Uvalde happened through a door that failed to lock. Killers have fired through the glass beside locked doors, which is why we train people to lock the door and then get out of its line of sight. They have never beaten the lock. A locked door assisted with barricading is the gold standard for hiding. Time is the whole fight, and that combination buys more of it than anything else in the building. The answer is never one tool for every person in every room. The answer is options, trained to the people and the building you actually have.

What the Data Says

The FBI's newest active shooter report covers 2025, and the numbers back Twin Falls all the way. People at the scene confronted the attacker in more than one out of five incidents last year, up from roughly one in twenty-four the year before. In attacks on houses of worship, civilians intervened 67 percent of the time. Read that number again. When killers come after churches, it is the people in the pews who most often stop them.

Independent research goes further. The Crime Prevention Research Center reviewed 561 active shooter incidents from 2014 through 2024 and found that armed citizens stopped 202 of them, about 36 percent, compared to the 14 cases in the FBI's official count. Argue about methodology if you want. The direction of every number is the same. When good people put pressure on a killer, the killing stops.

I am not telling you that every teacher or usher needs a pistol. I am telling you what 34 years of experience and every credible data set confirm. These events end when the killing gets hard. Somebody puts pressure on the attacker. Sometimes it is a cop three minutes out. Sometimes it is a citizen in a drive-thru line. The only variables are how long it takes and how many people die while everybody waits.

The West Freeway Failure

Some of you are already thinking about West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas. December 29, 2019. A man walked into Sunday service wearing a fake beard, a wig and a long coat. Jack Wilson, the volunteer who built and led that security team, ended the attack with one good shot in about six seconds. Jack Wilson is a hero. I say that first and mean it.

Now hear the rest, because if you run a church safety team, this is the part that should keep you up at night. The security that day was a catastrophe and a complete failure by the team. West Freeway should have been the most preventable active shooter attack in recent memory. It was a layup and the team missed it. As threat identification goes, it does not get easier than what walked through that door.

A grown man came into church in a costume. Fake beard. Wig. Long coat hiding a shotgun. He might as well have carried a sign. He was no stranger either. The church knew him as a troublemaker. He had come before asking for money and left angry when they said no. The team spotted him the moment he came through the door. Members watched him through the service. And watching is all that happened. Nobody isolated him. Nobody met him at the door, looked him in the eye and turned him away. Nobody bracketed him with positioned defenders so that any move he made was already covered from two angles. He sat in a pew on his own timeline, and when he stood up, he murdered deacon Tony Wallace and security team member Richard White. Richard White died reaching for his own weapon. Action beats reaction. It always will.

Then one good shot from Jack Wilson ended it. Two men were already gone and they did not have to be. Tony Wallace and Richard White died needlessly, with every tool that could have prevented it sitting unused. Six seconds is a phenomenal response. Two dead men is the price of no prevention. Pressure applied after the first shot saves lives. Pressure applied before the first shot saves everyone. Identify the threat. Isolate the threat. Deny him entry. And if he is inside anyway, bracket him so he never gets a free first move. That is what a trained team does, and that is the difference between responding to an attack and preventing one.

Plan. Train. Validate.

That trooper did not become brave in that parking lot. That citizen did not learn to run a handgun under fire in that moment. Preparation happened long before Saturday. Pressure was the fruit of it.

This is the framework Trident Shield brings to every church and Christian school we serve. Plan. Train. Validate.

Plan. You need a real emergency operations plan (EOP/EAP) written for your building and your people, and built to work on your worst day. Not a binder downloaded off the internet. A real plan spells out who does what, when, why, where and with whom. It covers the inside threat, the outside threat and all the shades of gray between an active assailant and the things that lead up to one. And it does not pretend the attack starts politely at the front door. Attacks happen on playgrounds and football fields, in the middle of service, at recess and dismissal, in parking lots and pews. Twin Falls was a drive-thru. A real plan protects your people wherever they stand, and it gives every one of them a way to put pressure on an attacker, from the smallest act to the strongest. Barricading. Communication. A defend team. Armed security. Name your answers in writing before the worst day names them for you.

Train. Training is preparation. It is where your safety team, your staff, your teachers, your congregants and your students build the skill and the will to act. It is where a team learns to spot a threat, make contact, isolate him and deny him entry before the first shot, instead of reacting after it. Nobody rises to the occasion. Everybody falls to their level of training. The two men in Twin Falls fell to a high level. Most churches and Christian schools have never trained their people or their students at all.

Validate. Drills are tests, not preparation. Running a lockdown drill on people you never trained is handing out a final exam for a class you never taught, and I have watched enough of them to tell you what they usually accomplish. They frighten people and they expose how ridiculous the plan is. That is not validation. Validation is walkthroughs. It is coaching. It is people moving through their own spaces and talking through their own roles in a low-stress environment that is engaging and empowering, until understanding is real and confidence is earned. That is why our Emergency Preparedness Day model replaces drills entirely. First we build understanding. Then we confirm it works. Then we fix what breaks.

Public schools do not run the model I am proposing. The law at least forces them to write plans and deliver some training, and sadly, it settles for drills. Most Christian schools and churches do none of it. Not the flawed version. Not any version. Our kids and congregations deserve better, and Nehemiah gave us the model twenty-five centuries ago: "And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night." Nehemiah 4:9. Faith and readiness are not rivals. They are partners.

Your People Are the First Responders

Twin Falls proved it again. When an attack starts, the people already on scene decide how it ends. Police response is measured in minutes. Attacks are decided in seconds. The first responders at your church are your greeters, your ushers, your safety team, your staff and your congregants. The first responders at your school are your teachers and your students, with age appropriate instruction. The only question is whether they will be trained.

Scripture does not call us to stand by while the wicked work. "Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked." Psalm 82:3-4. Rescue is an action verb. So is deliver.

Two prepared men in an Idaho parking lot rescued people they had never met. Build a team like that in your house. We will help you do it.

Schedule a consultation at meetings.hubspot.com/jasonp3 or call (800) 811-2420.

Together We Save Lives.