A shooting at the Great Mall near San Jose, California left thousands of people emotionally distressed, taking refuge in their place and calling home to tell families they loved them, authorities said Sunday, according to CBS San Francisco.
Officers responded around 5:16 p.m. local time on Saturday to numerous reports of gunfire inside the Great Mall located in the city of Milpitas. When they arrived, they found a 22-year-old San Francisco man who suffered a life-threatening gunshot wound and was later hospitalized.
Several police agencies responded to the Great Mall to help them. The shops were asked to protect themselves in their place while the inside of the mall was evacuated and searched by SWAT teams to find suspects and any other victims.
Two unrelated medical emergencies occurred during the evacuation. Both victims were taken to a local hospital by paramedics.
Officers completed the search at 9:26 p.m. without any gunmen being located. A subsequent overnight investigation by detectives determined the 22-year-old man who had shot himself and was not the victim of an act of violence.
The chaotic and terrifying event unfolded during the crisis of holiday shopping the last weekend before Christmas, and shoppers say the mall was full at the time of the shooting, despite the one in California home stay orders.
Terrified employees and shoppers ran out of the mall just minutes after the shooting.
“People were running forward. People were running backwards and people were falling,” Angelo Balma told CBS SF. He was at the mall with friends after a meeting at church and said he was at the Columbia store when he heard people calling, according to the station.
Other people hid in the back of the stores.
“They just said an active shooter and we were just running, and I just ran to the store because Levi’s guy said he was just running behind,” said one woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, in tears.
“People working in the store told everyone to run to the back of the store, so everyone was panicking and didn’t know what was going on,” Tiffany Shuler said. He understood Gap when he learned there was a shooting in the mall.
“We just went to the back room, barricaded the three doors we had and just waited for the police to arrive,” Cecilia Centenl said. He works in a clothing store inside the mall.
Officers from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department dressed in SWAT gear searched the store at the mall. They even found some shoppers hiding in a hallway.