The man suspected of opening fire and killing two people at a Boise mall died Tuesday morning at a hospital, police said.
Jacob Bergquist, 27, allegedly carried out the deadly Monday afternoon attack at Boise Towne Square Mall before he was shot in a gunfight with police outside the location, authorities said.
Police said the rampage began after Bergquist was confronted by 26-year-old mall security guard Jo Acker.
Bergquist allegedly shot and killed Acker before aiming at a glass escalator, killing 49-year-old Roberto Padilla Arguelles.
“Jo you were always kind [and] loving …. you always had such an enormous heart of gold,” Acker’s sister Shawna Lee Lannigan wrote on Facebook.
“You were and are and always will be a hero. I love you to the ends of this earth and beyond.”
Two other people inside the mall were wounded when the suspect fired shots at the floor.
During the gunfight outside the mall, a 68-year-old woman was shot while in her car. A Boise police officer, also in his vehicle, was hit by shards of glass by a bullet that pierced his window, authorities said.
The officer has since been released from the hospital.
Investigators on Tuesday searched a home in the city and sourced social media in an attempt to determine a motive for the violence, according to Boise Police Chief Ryan Lee.
Lee said Bergquist was known to the department for past reports of disorderly conduct or trespassing. But he was never arrested.
Mall security guards had also previously confronted Bergquist for disorderly behavior, the police chief said. Lee added that Bergquist frequently visited the shopping center.
With Post wires