This archive report was first published on 10 August 2019.
On August 8, 2019, a heavily armed man was arrested at a Walmart Neighborhood Market in Springfield, Missouri, after causing panic among customers.
According to Police Lt. Mike Lucas, officers responded to a call of an active shooter at the store on Thursday afternoon, but no shots were fired and no one was injured.
The man, identified as 20-year-old Dmitriy N. Andreychenko, was pushing a cart and recording himself walking through the store with a cell phone when the manager pulled the fire alarm to notify customers to escape.
“His intent was not to cause peace or comfort to anybody that was in the business,” Lucas said. “In fact, he’s lucky to be alive still to be honest.”
Andreychenko faces a charge of making a terrorist threat in the second degree, and Greene County Prosecuting Attorney stated that while Missouri protects the right to open carry a firearm, it does not allow individuals to act in a reckless and criminal manner endangering other citizens.
“Missouri protects the right of people to open carry a firearm, but that right does not allow an individual to act in a reckless and criminal manner endangering other citizens,” the prosecutor said in a statement. “As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously explained, ‘The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre causing a panic.'”
