Five people were shot and killed at a Seattle area shopping mall on Friday, September 23, and authorities say the suspect is still at large.
“We are still actively looking for the shooter,” Washington State Patrol spokesman Sargeant Mark Francis said at a news conference Friday. “Stay indoors, stay secure.”
On Friday, September 23, a lone gunman opened fire in the makeup department of a Macy’s department store at the Cascade Mall, about 65 miles north of Seattle, around 7 p.m.
Four women were fatally shot and killed at the scene of the crime, and a man who was taken to Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center later died of life-threatening injuries.
One customer told the Skagit Valley Herald that she was in the Macy’s women’s dressing room when she heard “what sounded like four balloons popping.”
“Then I heard seven or eight more, and I just stayed quiet in the dressing room because it just didn’t feel right. 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,” Caswell told the paper.
Police told the Associated Press that they are looking for a Hispanic man wearing black and armed with a “hunting-type” rifle. He was captured in a video recording strolling through the mall, and was last seen walking toward Interstate 5.
The FBI was sent to assist local law enforcement, a spokeswoman for the FBI said Friday night.
“At this time, we do not have information to suggest additional attacks planned in Washington,” said the FBI Seattle division spokeswoman, Ayn Dietrich-Williams.
