Coralville chief Bedford praises police response to Coral Ridge shooting

CORALVILLE - Coralville Police Chief Barry Bedford praised the multiagency response to Friday night's fatal shooting at the Coral Ridge Mall.

'I think it went off very well,” Bedford said Wednesday. 'I'm very proud of the response and grateful of the response we did.”

A Coralville police officer was at the mall around 7:30 Friday night, responding to a call for service at the Coral Ridge 10 movie theater, when 22-year-old Alexander Kozak shot and killed 20-year-old Andrea Farrington at the mall's information kiosk near the food court. The shooting prompted a response from every on-duty Coralville officer and some off-duty officers, as well as officers from surrounding agencies. Within minutes, the mall was placed into a lockdown, entrances were secured and access to the mall's parking lot was closed.

Kozak, a former security guard at the mall, reportedly resigned from his job on Friday. At some point that day, he left the mall, drove to his North Liberty home and returned to the mall with a 9 mm Glock handgun. Police said Kozak fatally shot Farrington, an Iowa Children's Museum employee working at the mall's information kiosk, three times in the back. Authorities have said Kozak targeted Farrington in the fatal shooting, but have not said why.

Bedford said the response was not happenstance, but the result of previous training and coordination made possible by the county's joint emergency communications center.

The department's Emergency Response Team trains in 'lots of different buildings in Coralville,” Bedford said. Specific buildings that have been identified as being potential targets for threats - such as schools and the mall - have hosted training in the past, he said.

'That way, the team has some perspective on how big it is, what some of the back hallways are,” Bedford said of the mall. 'We have some schematics of some of the buildings. We've been in some of the big box stores out there.”

The ERT has not trained for an active shooter scenario at the mall, but has responded to incidents in the past. In the early morning hours of Dec. 29, 2012, the ERT responded to Scheels when Joseph A. Moreno crashed his vehicle through the front entrance. Moreno - who was drunk - fired his 9 mm handgun inside the store. When officers were finally able to enter the store hours later, they discovered Moreno passed out inside.

Bedford said officers have since trained at the mall, based on things they learned during that incident.

In addition to previous training exercises, Bedford said his command staff recently talked through an active shooter scenario at the mall and different ways the department could respond. While Friday night's incident wasn't exactly what they discussed, Bedford said the exercise was useful.

'An active shooter is the worse case scenario,” he said. 'Anything that's not quite that intense was helpful, too.”

Bedford also praised the Joint Emergency Communication Center - which allowed for the various responding agencies to speak to each other and coordinate their responses - and specifically dispatcher Lori Snider. Before the JECC was built, departments in the county operated different radio systems and weren't always able to communicate with each other. The ability to speak with one another as the shooting response unfolded was 'crucially important,” Bedford said, noting the improvement in efficiency.

'I think, more importantly, from a safety standpoint, (officers) weren't sure where (Kozak) was and if he was still in the area,” Bedford said. 'Someone from another agency could have gotten hurt or let him go inadvertently.”

Kozak was arrested after a traffic stop on Interstate 80 in Scott County about an hour after the shooting. He has been charged with first-degree murder and faces life in prison if convicted. He is being held in the Muscatine County Jail on a $10 million bond.