She Texted "Mommy, I'm Alive" — Inside the In-N-Out Shooting Scare

Imagine getting a breaking news alert on your phone, and somewhere in the back of your mind, a cold thought hits you — my daughter is there right now.

That's exactly what happened to one family in West Covina, California, over the weekend. And what followed was some of the most terrifying, uncertain minutes of their lives.

Let's set the scene first. On Saturday afternoon, around 2:30 local time, a gunman walked into an In-N-Out restaurant in Twin Falls, Idaho and opened fire.

Police later identified the shooter as 24-year-old Chad Williams. By the time it was over, three people were dead and seven more were injured. Williams then turned the gun on himself.

In-N-Out's president, Lynsi Snyder, confirmed that one of the employees killed that day was a woman working at the restaurant.

It's the kind of story that, for most people watching from far away, feels distant. But for one Southern California family, it hit a lot closer to home than they ever expected.

That's because their 24-year-old daughter had traveled to Twin Falls as part of what was described as an "all-star team" — a group of experienced employees sent out to help train new staff for the restaurant's brand-new location.

She was working inside that In-N-Out when the shooting began.

Her parents, Nikki and Micheal, learned about the shooting the same way a lot of people did — through a phone alert, this one from the Citizen safety app. And almost immediately, the panic set in, because they knew exactly where their daughter was supposed to be that day.

Here's where it gets really hard to sit with. While the shooting was still unfolding, their daughter ran from the building — and in the chaos, she left her cell phone behind.

That meant there was no way for her to call home right away. And for her parents, the silence was unbearable.

Eventually, she managed to borrow a friend's phone to call her parents. Her mother recalled that in that first call, her daughter could barely speak through the tears, repeating that she was alive.

Her father asked if police had arrived and if she was safe. She said yes — but she also told him that a coworker had been shot.

Even from hundreds of miles away in California, that family felt every second of the uncertainty coming out of a small city in southern Idaho.

Once the fear started to settle, a new frustration set in. The parents say In-N-Out never reached out to them directly during the emergency, and they felt left in the dark by the company their daughter was working for that day.

Their point was simple — if a company sends employees somewhere for work, shouldn't there be a system in place to contact families the moment something like this happens?

CBS Los Angeles reached out to In-N-Out for comment on their emergency protocols, but as of publishing, the company had not responded.

As for their daughter, she's still without her phone, but she's expected to be back home in Southern California soon.

This is still a developing story, and we'll continue to follow it as police release more information and as In-N-Out responds to the questions this family — and honestly, a lot of other families — are now asking.

If this story affected you, let us know your thoughts in the comments, and subscribe for more updates as we continue covering this.

Stay safe, and we'll see you in the next one.