Black Friday shooting at Tacoma Mall left shoppers ‘running for their lives’
Frantic parents with children in their arms fled in every direction during a Black Friday shooting at a packed mall in Washington, witnesses said.
Kobe Marsh was inside Panera Bread at Tacoma Mall with a friend when they heard a loud bang, which they quickly realized was gunfire around 7:08 p.m., the Sun reported Saturday.
People were screaming and “running for their lives,” Marsh said.
“It was chaos,” Marsh said. “It all happened so fast. At first we didn’t realize. We stood there for about three to five seconds, but when saw a stream of people running we realized it was gunshots that we’d heard.”
Shopper Bethany Villero told CNN that after the shots rang out, “I saw people throwing up, I guess they were so scared.”
Kobe said he initially heard one gunshot and then heard about six or seven more. Other witnesses claim to have heard as many as 15 shots, the Sun said.
“We saw mothers crying, with their kids in their arms just running. Other people were just really confused” Marsh said.
“It was terrifying. There were just hundreds of people flooding out of the mall.
“Luckily we weren’t too far from my car. I just had tunnel vision as I was running.”
Kobe said the gunshots sounded as if they were coming from a “fully automatic weapon.”
“I’ve never experienced anything like that before — I just can’t believe it,” he said.
One person was shot and taken to a local hospital with serious injuries in the incident, Tacoma police told CNN. No arrests have been made.
In 2005, the Tacoma Mall was the site of a 2005 mass shooting. Gunman Dominick Maldonado shot and wounded six people.
