A coworker dragged a wounded young woman across the parking lot, staying by her side until paramedics arrived. Days later, her family confirmed she never made it — and revealed what she had been working toward.
A mass shooting outside a newly opened In-N-Out in Twin Falls, Idaho, left three people dead and several more wounded over the weekend. Among the victims was a 23-year-old employee whose story has now torn through social media, as friends, coworkers, and strangers try to make sense of what happened.
Her family has since come forward with details about who she was, what she loved, and the goal she was working toward before her life was cut short. But her mother has also had to speak up for a very different reason.The Shooting and Its Victims
On August 1, 2026, the newly opened In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho, looked like any other location in the chain. Workers in their red aprons and paper hats moved through the lunch rush, serving fries and welcoming customers through the door.
The restaurant had been open for barely a week. It was the company’s 441st location, according to an Instagram announcement, and had drawn steady crowds since its debut. Twin Falls sits roughly 130 miles southeast of Boise, in a stretch of the city’s north side packed with hotels, retailers, and restaurants.
It’s the kind of place residents and travelers pass through every day without a second thought. That changed just before 2:30 p.m., when a young man walked in carrying a gun.Three people were killed. One of them was 59-year-old Christopher Claunch, known to friends as “Toph,” a man who had spent the past two years dedicated to helping others get sober after overcoming his own struggle with alcoholism.
Claunch worked at Renaissance Ranch Recovery Center in Rupert, the same facility that had once helped him find sobriety. A spokesperson for his family said Claunch had “a magnet” quality that drew people struggling with addiction toward him, and that helping them was the brightest part of his day.
His sister, Kimberly Castaneda, told reporters that Claunch had lived in Idaho for roughly 30 years but never lost his California roots — he made a point of stopping at In-N-Out every time he visited the coast. He’d planned to wait out the opening-week crowds at the new Twin Falls location, she said, never expecting it would be the last place he’d go.Witnesses Narrate What They Saw
Twin Falls resident Haley Dodaro was in the drive-thru with her mother when the chaos began. She initially thought a fire had broken out until a man in a reflective vest told them otherwise. “People were running out crying and screaming,” Dodaro recalled. “It was very scary.”
Inside the restaurant, Nayeli Rodriguez was waiting for her food with her daughters when gunfire erupted from the kitchen area. An employee told everyone to get down, and an older stranger shielded Rodriguez and her girls until they were among the last to make it outside.”We were trying to get as far as we could, and some angels let us in their car,” Rodriguez recounted. She left her own vehicle behind in the parking lot.
Lane Koehn was stopped at a nearby traffic light when he saw a man carrying an AR-style rifle step out of the drive-thru lane. Another man with a pistol began firing back at the gunman. That’s when Koehn saw something that has stayed with him.
An employee in an In-N-Out uniform was dragging another uniformed coworker across the parking lot — a young woman, bleeding from a gunshot wound to her chest. Koehn and the armed bystander stayed with her until paramedics arrived.
“She was pretty bad off, but I don’t know. I hope she made it,” Koehn said. She didn’t.The Woman Behind the In-N-Out Uniform
That employee was identified Monday as Ashley Garibay, a 23-year-old originally from Stockton, California, who had relocated for work at the brand-new Idaho location.
Friends and family confirmed her death in a wave of emotional tributes online. This was Garibay’s very first job, and, according to her family, it quickly became much more than a paycheck.
“In-N-Out Burger was Ashley’s first job, and she fell in love with it. She proudly traveled to open new stores, and her dream was to one day manage an In-N-Out store. She was passionate about serving Customers and left this world doing what she loved to do,” her family said in a statement.
Those closest to her described Garibay as kind, adventurous, and endlessly driven — someone whose smile and laugh left an impression on nearly everyone she met. Her family said she consistently put others first, even as she quietly carried her own hardships.They also expressed gratitude toward the In-N-Out coworkers, first responders, and bystanders — including Koehn — who rushed to comfort Garibay in her final moments.
Friend Alissa Juarez shared her own heartbreak online, writing: “Oh my beautiful friend…my heart breaks seeing your pictures knowing they’ll just be memories now.”
Garibay’s mother, Sabrina, changed her Facebook profile picture to a photo of the two of them smiling together. Family friends flooded the post with memories, including one who wrote that they remembered Garibay as a baby, staying with them while her mother worked, and watching her grow into “a beautiful young lady.”
In-N-Out’s owner, Lynsi Snyder, also addressed the tragedy directly in a message to staff and customers, calling the shooter “a disgusting human who doesn’t value the lives of others or his own” and asking the company’s community to lean on faith rather than anger during the grief ahead, in a lengthy tribute shared online.A Warning From Garibay’s Mother
As tributes poured in, Garibay’s mother, Sabrina, was forced to address something far less comforting: a fraudulent fundraiser using her daughter’s name and tragedy to solicit donations.
A GoFundMe titled “Support Ashley after Twin Falls Shooting” was created by someone identified only as Erin Gonzalez — a person with no apparent connection to the family.
“There is a [GoFundMe] out there it is not me please do not donate,” Sabrina wrote, sharing a screenshot of the fake page for her followers to recognize and avoid. The third victim who died in the shooting has not yet been publicly identified. As we previously reported, the In-N-Out attack left seven others wounded.
Terry Dudley Was Simply Charging His Car
Among those caught in the parking lot was Terry Dudley, a taxi driver who had pulled in between customer rides to charge his Tesla. He never got the chance to leave before the gunfire reached him.
Dudley was sitting inside his car when the shooter opened fire, striking him twice in the back, his longtime friend and coworker James Crow told CNN. His son, Michael Dudley, later told NBC News that his father was shot in the back, near his neck.
“He was just in the car,” Michael Dudley said. “He got shot, and then the car next to him got lit up, as well.”
Witness video circulating from the scene shows a man in a black T-shirt firing an AR-style rifle into a parked Tesla through the windshield before jogging away through the parking lot. It remains unclear whether that vehicle belonged to Dudley.Bleeding and in shock, Dudley managed to call Crow and tell him he had been shot. The two men have been friends for a decade, first bonding over motorcycling before eventually becoming business partners at North Star Taxi.
“He’s a larger-than-life kind of guy, just a big personality,” Crow told CNN. “He’s boisterous, but he’s still like a very gentle soul, very kind, compassionate, loves to laugh. He wants to enjoy life, he’s tenacious, charismatic.”
Michael Dudley had just finished an overnight bartending shift and was asleep when he woke up to an urgent phone call telling him his father had been shot. He said his father suffered severe injuries, was intubated, and had to be airlifted to a hospital.
Dudley has raised four children alone since being widowed years ago, including three sons and a daughter. His son said the family’s focus now is entirely on his recovery.Other Customers Describe a Scramble for Cover
Dudley wasn’t the only person in the parking lot fighting to survive those minutes. One witness, sitting in a car with his two younger brothers while waiting for his sister to return with their food, heard the first shots and looked up to see a man walking between vehicles with a pistol.
“We were just sitting there, I was playing on my phone when I heard a couple pops and I look up and I see a gentleman walking from a white vehicle to another vehicle with a pistol in his hand,” he told CNN affiliate KMVT.
He told his brothers to duck and threw himself across the front seat for cover, keeping track of the gunman’s location as best he could. His sister had just ordered food and stepped into the restroom when the shooting started.
As other customers crowded in beside her to try to barricade the door, she waited until it seemed safe, then ran out through the drive-thru line, directly into the shooter’s path.
“As I was running I faced the shooter head on and he pointed the gun at me,” she said. “I ducked behind a white car just to have some sort of coverage.” She said she spotted a pistol resting on what she believed was the gunman’s gun case, grabbed it, and tried to use it, but it was jammed.
Koehn was stopped at a light just outside the restaurant when he saw someone emerge from the drive-thru carrying an AR-style rifle. He watched the shooter move erratically through the parking lot while another armed customer, positioned in the drive-thru line, fired back and appeared to draw the gunman’s attention away from fleeing bystanders.
“The shooter was solely focused on him, and [it] allowed us to get out,” Koehn told NBC News. “I mean, the car directly ahead of me was getting shot — it gave them time to leave.” He estimated the entire ordeal lasted 10 to 15 minutes.Two Bystanders Are Credited With Saving Lives
Authorities say the shooting could have been far worse without the intervention of two people: an off-duty state trooper and an armed civilian, both of whom returned fire toward the gunman during the attack.
Police believe those actions helped drive the shooter away from the restaurant and prevented further casualties. Twin Falls County Sheriff Jack Johnson called the pair “true heroes in our community,” crediting their actions with diverting the shooter and saving lives.
Minutes after officers arrived on scene, a separate officer-involved shooting took place, though no one was injured. The Twin Falls officer who fired is currently under internal review, Hicks said.The Gunman Is Identified
The shooter was identified as 24-year-old Chad Williams. He died from what investigators determined was a self-inflicted gunshot wound after the exchange of gunfire, according to police.
