COLUMBIA, Md. (WJZ) — Several witnesses have spoken to WJZ about what happened during Columbia’s mall shooting.“We heard about 10 shots; they were all pretty loud,” said one woman. “Protect them kids [was all I could think of]. They were all so little; one was a newborn. It’s horrifying. It’s sad.”
Shopper Shafon says she saw the shooter.
“I looked up at the second floor by the escalators, the shooter looked straight at me and pointed the shotgun and took a shot and my husband yelled get down and we ducked,” she said.
She said the shot hit the wall and caused the plaster to fall on them, another shot hit a fire extinguisher. She described him as young, between 18-21, tan khaki pants, white shirt, suspenders, shotgun.
“I came out of the bathroom, my daughters were on the merry-go-round upstairs and I heard the shots and my husband, I see him jump over the table, people were running. All of a sudden, my husband said, ‘Watch out!’ I looked up at the second floor and the shooter is looking straight at me with a shotgun. My niece and my girlfriend was with me at the time and she screamed and I think it took the shooter out of trance, because when he looked at me it was like he looked at me as if to say, he had already shot two people and he looked at me he was just like stunned. When he shot towards me, my husband said, ‘Duck!’ I ducked, and the bullet went right across my head and the plaster from the wall fell all over me. And then he shot again and he almost hit my girlfriend. So my husband took my kids and he ran upstairs right in front of the shooter and jumped over the merry-go-round and broke his jaw but he got the kids and saved the kids,” Shafon said.
“I was in the food court. There was a very large bang; everyone looked around, like, `What was that?’,” said a witness, known only as Beth. “Everyone was stunned and didn’t react. [Once we realized] we all ran. I hid under a table. I called 911 right away. I called 911 and the lady that answered seemed like it was something she hadn’t heard about yet. While I was on the phone with her there were 3 more shots, the last two sounded further away, like maybe the gunman was running away and then there was nothing after that. About 10 minutes after that the police were in the mall and yelling for us to get out immediately, but they did not stop us at the door or anything, they didn’t ask us to stick around and give our account or anything.”
Beth estimates there were close to 100 people at the food court.
“While I was on the phone [with 911], there were three more shots,” Beth said. “She told me not to move, to stay under the table.”
Once police told her to leave, she said she went home.
“I don’t see myself going back to the mall for a while,” Beth said.
“We stood there probably for an hour and I could smell smoke. I was concerned there was a fire,” said a witness, Marnie, who was there with her son. “We were one of the last ones coming out of the mall.”
Marnie said her son was hysterical.
“He said, `Mommy, are we going to get out of here alive?’ And you just don’t know,” she said. “You just don’t think it’s going to happen to you.”
“I was sitting at a table in the food court and I heard at first what wounded like someone throwing a trash can over the balcony, but then I heard it 3 more times… I hopped the counter at Arby’s and helped them escaped through the back door,” said a witness named Henry. “A woman approached me (in the parking lot) who said she saw the guy with the gun and she described it to me as a shotgun. I heard what sounded like someone say ‘Oh no he’s got a .32, run!’ And then the woman I gave a ride home to said it was a shotgun. I counted about nine shots before I made it out the back of Arby’s.”
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Witnesses Share Terror Of Columbia Mall Shooting in Baltimore that left 3 Dead (BLOG) Updated at :
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Saturday, January 25, 2014
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