She would have been the first one to go down to confront somebody.” I know she would have wanted to make everyone else safe. “I was told she was helping people and saving them. She was helping people be safe and get out of the way and they shot at her,” Ray Dawn, Acker’s partner of nearly three years, told the Idaho Statesman.
Bergquist was taken into custody Monday and died the next day police said there had been an “exchange of gunfire” with him.Īcker’s partner and siblings say she died a hero she ran toward Bergquist, hoping to stop him.
Another person at the mall, Roberto Padilla Arguelles, 49, was killed, and at least four people were injured. The gunman, now identified as Jacob Bergquist, 27, shot Acker, and she died at the scene. Jo Acker, 26, confronted the shooter on the first floor of the mall near a department store, according to a police report. A transgender woman working as a security guard was killed when a gunman opened fire at the Boise Towne Square Mall in Idaho Monday, and her family members say she took actions that undoubtedly saved many lives there.
