The alternate headline for this one could read, “‘good guy with gun’ stops mass murder attempt in another ‘weapon-free’ zone.”

A 28-year-old man was shot and killed by an off-duty cop after the suspect went on a stabbing rampage at a Tauton mall that was the end of his trail of terror.

A Massachusetts man stabbed four people, two fatally, at a home and a shopping mall south of Boston before he was shot and killed by an off-duty law enforcement officer, authorities said late Tuesday.

Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III told reporters that A___ D___*, 28, of Taunton, crashed a car outside a home in the city, walked inside and stabbed an 80-year-old woman and another woman. The 80-year-old was taken to a hospital, where she later died. The other woman was being treated for life-threatening injuries.

Neighbors told WFXT the women who were attacked in the home were mother and daughter.

“My son was here and heard the loud noise,” a neighbord told the station. “An accident had happened, someone was coming out of the house. [He] realized that person had a knife.”

D___ then drove to the Silver City Galleria mall, where he crashed a car into the front of a Macy’s store. Quinn said D___ assaulted three people inside the store before running to a Bertucci’s restaurant and stabbing two other people, including a 56-year-old man who later died. An off-duty deputy sheriff intervened at the restaurant and shot D___ dead, Quinn said.

There was no known motive for either of the attacks (update: his family saying that he had, “psychiatric issues in the past and that he refused to take medication.”), and the people at the mall were seemingly simply targets of opportunity for what appears to be a spree killer.

The situation came to an end when an off-duty deputy sheriff having dinner at Bertucci’s restaurant drew his concealed handgun and shot the murderer to death after warning him to drop his knife.

Mass murderers and spree killers typically target schools, businesses, malls, and other places where weapons are banned.

The Crime Prevention Research Center released a report in 2014 which notes 92% of mass shooters target “gun free zones” for their attacks. We do not know if any reports that cover the relatively rare phenomenon of mass stabbings in the United States, but considering the apparent trend towards mass stabbing in Europe and the Middle East, we may unfortunately have to start dealing with that reality.

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We will note that while it may be a legal and practical impossibility to carry firearms in many areas, it is perfectly legal to carry an individual first aide kit (IFAK) or “blowout kit” just about anywhere, including through TSA security at airports according to friends who have done it. There are numerous options for carrying tourniquets and pressure dressings compactly and discretely being developed. We do not know at this time if such a kit would have made a difference at these two crime scenes, but we do know for a fact that these kits have saved lives at both crime scenes and accident sites.

* Bearing Arms does not publish the names of mass or spree killers. They do not deserve the fame they seek.