Concert goers thought the man might carry out a mass shooting. Police now say it was something else.

Amanda Pérez Pintado, USA TODAY
·5 min read
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Correction: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect date for the music festival.

A man carried two pistols in a parking lot outside a crowded music festival near George, Washington.

Concertgoers on Aug. 19 said they saw him inhale an unknown substance from a balloon and then load the weapons from the trunk of his car. Then, they said, he asked what time the concert ended and where people would exit the venue.

Witnesses alerted authorities about the suspicious man around 9 p.m. and he was arrested.

Police originally said the suspect, Jonathan Moody, 31, may have had plans to launch a shooting spree during the three-day electronic dance music event at the Gorge Amphitheatre.

But upon further investigation, authorities do not believe he had the intent of carrying out a mass shooting.

“The answer to what his intent may have been is not yet (disclosable) since the investigation is still underway,” Kyle Foreman, public information officer of Grant County Sheriff’s Office, said in an email.

“However, we can disclose that after being interviewed by detectives and the warrant services now being completed, detectives do not believe Moody had a mass shooting plan,” Foreman said.

Grant County Prosecuting Attorney Kevin McCrae declined to comment "due to ethics rules regarding speaking about ongoing cases.”

Moody, of Ephrata, was arraigned on Monday on charges of possession of a dangerous weapon and unlawful carrying or handling of a weapon.

In Washington, no law directly prohibits openly carrying a firearm, though there are some restrictions. Gov. Jay Inslee last year signed a law that prohibits openly carrying guns at the state Capitol and at public protests statewide.

"The Gorge Amphitheater does not allow weapons on site, but Moody’s possession of weapons was not the lone factor for his arrest," authorities said in a statement. "Moody’s actions of appearing to inhale an intoxicant, loading weapons in the parking lot, and his questions about where concertgoers would be exiting and at what time, furthered the suspicions of witnesses and deputies."

Moody pleaded not guilty and was released after posting a $10,000 bail. His next court date is scheduled for Sept. 8 in Grant County District Court.

“If you see something, say something,” Grant County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post. “The concertgoers did the right thing by reporting suspicious activity, and we appreciate their involvement.”

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The fear of mass shootings

The alarm concertgoers felt when they spotted the suspicious armed man is all too familiar. Nearly half of Americans reported in 2019 being worried that they or someone in their family will become a victim of a mass shooting and a third said the fear of mass shootings stops them from going to certain public spaces.

On Oct. 1, 2017, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history killed 58 people and injured more than 400 others during an outdoor concert in Las Vegas. The gunman opened fire from a hotel room above the crowded event.

So far, there have been 19 mass killings this year, according to USA Today’s database.

“This person wasn't de-armed, so it wasn't unreasonable to think of this person as a potential mass shooter,” said Janice Johnson Dias, associate professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "The response makes sense to me in every way, it's just tragic for us that we have not set in place a set of structural things to make people feel safer.”

The fear of mass shootings, however, doesn’t always align with the actual threat, research shows. Mass shootings are statistically rare, but factors such as pervasive media coverage give the perception that they’re more common than they really are, said Jaclyn Schildkraut, interim executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government.

“If you look at all of the offenses that are known to law enforcement... homicide, in general, makes up about 1% of those offensive and then mass shootings make up less than 1% of that 1%,” Schildkraut said. “We're talking about something that is incredibly rare but garners a lot of attention. And so that makes it very disproportional in terms of our understanding.”

Schildkraut said the lack of understanding of what a mass shooting is also contributes to the gap between the risk of a mass shooting and the public’s perception of the threat. The Gun Violence Archive, for instance, categorizes incidents in which four or more people are shot or killed as mass shootings, while The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University database defines mass killings as incidents in which there are four or more fatalities.

"The way in which mass shootings have been portrayed to our country, and the way in which our country subsequently has made sense of and response to these events, has also led us to be a very reactive country rather than a proactive country,” Schildkraut said. “We don't spend enough time working to prevent the next one.”

For Johnson Dias, how the public perceives crime should be taken “really seriously in terms of how we respond to crime.”

“Perceptions of fear matter because how we perceive who's a criminal really matters and that perception is flawed and bigoted and problematic,” Johnson Dias said. “And it will lead us to the place that happened in Washington, which is where we have failed to understand the actual crime that is occurring, and therefore don't have an adequate response to keeping people safe.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Suspected shooting plotted at Gorge Amphitheater a false alarm: Police