A manhunt is underway Saturday for a gunman police said opened fire at a mall in Washington state, killing four women and one man, authorities said.
The shooting took place around 7 p.m. Friday in the makeup department of a Macy’s store at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Wash., about 60 miles north of Seattle, the AP reported.
A helicopter, search teams and K-9 units scoured the area for the shooter, who fled on foot, according to the Skagit County Department of Emergency Management.
The shooter is described as a Hispanic male wearing a gray shirt and armed with a rifle, according to several Twitter posts Washington State Patrol spokesman Sgt. Mark Francis.
The suspected shooter was last seen walking toward Interstate 5 from Cascade Mall, Francis said.
There were initially conflicting reports of how many victims were killed, but late Friday police confirmed that four people had died inside the mall. An injured male, the fifth victim, was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, county emergency officials said, but died there Saturday morning.
Speaking to local media outlets, those in the mall described a chaotic scene as shots rang out.
“Someone ran by and said, ‘There’s an active shooter in the mall,’ and told us to lock our gate,” Doc Barron, who had been teaching a boxing class at the mall, told the Skagit Valley Herald.
Tari Caswell told the paper she was in a women’s dressing room at Macy’s when she heard “what sounded like four balloons popping, and I thought that was strange because I hadn’t seen any balloons.”
“Then I heard seven or eight more, and I just stayed quiet in the dressing room because it just didn’t feel right,” Caswell told the paper. “And it got very quiet. And then I heard a lady yelling for help, and a man came and got me and another lady, and we ran out of the store.”
Armando Patino told KOMO News that he helped frightened shoppers hide inside the T-Mobile store where he worked after people began realizing there was a gunman.
“Out of nowhere I just hear somebody yell and then after that, I turn around and just look at the Macy’s and I just hear shots,” Patino told the station. “I turn around and run to the store. Some people didn’t know where to go. I just moved them into the [T-Mobile] store. We went in the back where we have a door and everything and we just stayed there until they told us to evacuate.”
The Cascade Mall management said the property would be closed Saturday “out of respect for the victims of this tragic event and their families.”
The shooting was the second mass attack at an American mall in a week. Last Saturday, 20-year-old Dahir Ahmed Adan went on a stabbing rampage inside the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud, Minn., injuring 10 people before he was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer.
Federal and local authorities have said they are investigating the Sept. 17 attack in Minnesota as a “potential act of terrorism.” The day after the attack, a news agency linked to the Islamic State militant group claimed Adan was “a soldier of the Islamic State.”
As of Saturday morning, police have not identified a motive or named the suspect in the Washington mall attack. The FBI field office in Seattle is assisting local authorities but said late Friday on Twitter that it had “no information to suggest additional attacks planned” in Washington state.
“Tragedy has struck in Washington tonight. Our hearts are in Burlington where a shooter has taken the lives of at least four people. Many questions remain but our state patrol and local law enforcement are on the scene working swiftly to locate the shooter and clear the area,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, D, said in a statement late Friday. “Trudi and I send our condolences to the families of the victims and prayers for anyone injured. We urge residents to heed all safety and detour warnings. Stay close to your friends and loved ones as we await more information and, hopefully, news of the suspect’s capture.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Amy B Wang
