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A man fired a gun during a brawl at the Tysons Corner Center mall in Virginia on Saturday afternoon, police said, sending panicked visitors and workers to flee or hide in locker rooms, offices and other shelters.
Fairfax County Police said they had not found anyone hit by bullets, but noted that multiple shots had been fired. Three people were injured while fleeing the mall.
Authorities have closed a large mall in one of Washington’s most populous suburbs, located just off Beltway and Chain Bridge Road. It is scheduled to reopen on Sunday.
Heavily armed officers went from store to store to reach the people who had taken refuge on the spot and to ensure that those involved in the scandals were “no longer present.” No arrests were made, and police said detectives viewed the videos from hundreds of different angles and spoke to many witnesses.
The videos show people fleeing the Tysons’s Corner Center mall in Tysons, Virginia, on June 18 after a man was allegedly shot with a gun during a battle. (Video: The Washington Post)
“The fact that the shots rang out in a place as safe as Tyson Corner makes all our hearts fall to our stomachs,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis told a news conference. “It’s something that shocks us all.”
Deputy Chief of Police Brian Riley said a fight appeared to have broken out between a group of people on a second-level aisle around 2:45 p.m., and a man pulled out a firearm and fired. Earlier, police said the shooting took place near Macy’s store.
Riley declined to say how many shots were fired, but confirmed there were several rounds. He said several shell casings had been found. Fairfax County police officers are always hired at the mall and rush to the scene of the battle as more officers invade the area. Reilly said two groups of at least three people each took part in the battle.
In an attempt to allay the fears of mall visitors and others, district police announced on Twitter shortly after the incident that there were no reports of an active shooter. But the recent deadly attacks on a grocery store in Buffalo and a primary school in Uwalde, Texas, have scared people.
Felicimo Gannon, 22, lives in Warrington, Virginia, and was shopping for Nordstrom’s clothes with his mother and brother when he said “everyone started running.” He said they had heard what the shots might have been, but were not sure.
He said some people rushed to a nearby parking lot while he and his family entered the locker room to hide. About a dozen other people did the same. They found an emergency exit that led to a staircase and a door.
There, Gannon said they had stopped, unsure whether it was safer inside or outside. That’s when they heard crashes. Now he believes there were probably no shots, but at the time this necessitated a decision: run through the door.
They found “tons of people leaving” outside, he said, and they crossed the street and “made their way farther and farther from the mall.” He later tweeted a video of their escape.
A week earlier, Gannon was at the March for Our Lives in County, when a man shouted what others thought was a gun threat that led to a small scuffle before order was restored. No firearms were found.
“It was kind of crazy to see that wave of people again,” said Gannon, who is studying political science at Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32 people in 2007. I thought, “Wow, this is happening again.” ”
Matt McNair, 43, was in the locker room at The Gap when officers rushed him and others to the store’s back office, where he remained for about 90 minutes.
“In the past, I would have thought it was a false alarm,” McNair said. “Now, after everything that happened, I immediately thought he was an active shooter and went into save mode.”
Gloria Johnson, 73, was shopping at Macy’s when she heard people screaming and rushing to a door. She and the others went to the locker room, and she called her son with the frightening news.
The group remained hidden for nearly half an hour, refraining from talking and using hand signals to keep each other informed of news coming to their phones. She kept in touch with her son via SMS until a security guard came in and directed them to the parking lot.
“There was chaos everywhere,” Johnson said, noting police and helicopters. At that time, her son and his brother had reached the mall and met. As they returned home, they thought about the moment.
“You never know now when you walk out the door how it’s going to end,” Johnson said. “There is so much gun violence. I thought of nothing but going out and enjoying this beautiful day. “
Justin Juvenal contributed to this report.
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