Hundreds of terrified shoppers fled in a panic after a man got out of a silver sedan Saturday afternoon and began shooting at a mall in the city of Allen, a northern suburb of Dallas, Texas.
In the mass shooting, which occurred at Allen Premium Outlets around 3:30 pm (local time), nine people were killed, including the attacker, and seven were reported injured on Sunday, authorities said.
The attacker, who has not been identified, was killed by a police officer who was on the scene for a call unrelated to the shooting.
A 16-year-old employee of a pretzel stand, Maxwell Gum, described a stampede of customers when the shooting began.
Gum took refuge with other people in a warehouse.
“We ran out, people were stepping on the children
,” Gum said.
"My co-worker picked up a 4-year-old girl and gave her to her parents."
People raise their hands as they walk past police in the parking lot of the Allen Premium Outlets shopping center, in Texas, on May 6, 2023.LM Otero / AP
Video circulating on social media taken with a vehicle's camera shows a gunman getting out of a car outside the mall and shooting at people on a sidewalk.
More than three dozen shots are heard on the recording.
According to Jonathan Boyd, the fire chief for Allen, a town about 25 miles north of Dallas, seven people, including the shooter, died at the scene.
Nine people were taken to area hospitals, but two of them died.
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Three of the victims were in critical condition Saturday night
and four were in stable condition, Boyd said.
An Allen police officer was responding to another emergency in the area when he heard gunshots at the mall at 3:36 p.m., the Police Department wrote on Facebook.
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“The officer confronted the suspect and neutralized the threat.
He then called emergency personnel,” he added.
Broken windows, traces of blood
Fontayne Payton, 35, was in an H&M store when she heard the shots through her headphones.
“It was very loud, it sounded like it was right outside,” he explained.
Employees directed shoppers to a back room with a lockable door, he said.
When they were given permission to leave, Payton
saw broken windows in the store and a trail of blood to the door
.
Nearby were abandoned sandals and bloody clothing.
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Outside, Payton saw the bodies of the deceased.
“I was praying they weren't kids, but they looked like kids,” she said.
The bodies were covered with white sheets, collapsed on [shopping] bags.
"It broke me to see that."
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A little further away he saw the body of a burly man dressed in black.
He assumed he was the attacker, he stated, because unlike the other corpses he was not covered.
Employees hiding in stores
Tarakram Nunna, 25, and Ramakrishna Mullapudi, 26, said they saw what
appeared to be three lifeless bodies
on the ground, including one that appeared to be that of a police officer and another of a mall security guard. .
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Another shopper, Sharkie Mouli, 24,
said he hid in a Banana Republic store during the shooting
.
When he got out he saw what appeared to be an unconscious policeman on the floor with another person.
"I saw his gun right next to him and another person who was dying," Mouli said.
Stan and Mary Ann Greene were looking at items in the Columbia store when the shooting began.
A police officer guards one of the entrances to the mall in Allen, Texas, on Saturday, where the massacre took place.AP
"We had just arrived a few minutes before and suddenly
we heard some loud explosions
," he said.
Employees locked the security doors and ushered everyone to the back of the store until police arrived and escorted them out, Greenes said.
Eber Romero was shopping at the Under Armor store when one of the cashiers told him that a shooting was taking place.
When he left the store, Romero said, the mall seemed empty and all the stores were closed.
He then saw broken glass and
the victims on the floor
.
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Another witness, Kingsley Ezeh, claimed that she was walking inside the mall when everyone started running in unison.
"Someone's Shooting"
"I turned and saw two women running towards me. One of them said: 'Someone is shooting, someone is shooting,'" she said.
Behind the fleeing women, Ezeh could see
a man clutching his neck, where "blood was coming out of him
. "
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He then hid with others in the back of a store for about an hour until the police arrived.
Other witnesses said they remained in hiding for two hours until they were rescued.
According to Kimberly Blakey, she and her 14-year-old daughter were in the middle of a group of drivers trying to get away in their cars in the mall parking lot during the attack.
"The shots were followed. They did not stop
," he said.
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In the rush to flee, Blakey initially headed in the direction of the shots, until her daughter told her they had to turn around.
But when they tried to reach the exit, they got stuck in the middle of other cars that were trying to do the same.
That's when his car received two bullet wounds.
"I told my daughter to get down. She did and I heard her start to pray."
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They were both able to pull out of the parking lot and didn't stop until they got home, when Blakey realized she had a flat tire and a light on on her dashboard.
According to Tiffany Gipson, an employee at the Fatburger hamburger restaurant, the shooting was shocking.
She and some customers hid in a hallway behind the store.
"
I've never seen anything like this. This is very traumatic for me
, who already suffers from anxiety and seizures," Gipson said.
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The mall, which is operated by Simon Property Group, occupies 69 acres and has more than 120 stores.
The company thanked the emergency services and the police who removed the attacker.
"
We are horrified by today's senseless tragedy
[Saturday] and outraged by the violence that continues to plague our country," the company said in a statement.
The United States has experienced at least 199 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people are killed, not including the perpetrator of the attack.
The shooting in Allen took place just a week after a man killed five people in Cleveland, Texas, after a neighbor told him to stop shooting because a baby was sleeping.
With information from
The Associated Press
,
NBC
and
CNN
.
