SCARE AT THE MALL
Gunfire in parking lot sparks evacuation of Spring field Mall:
SPRINGFIELD >> Scenes of police officers with guns running into Springfield Mall, yelling at people to get out or shut the gates as hundreds rushed out unfurled Saturday following a fight between two groups of males that turned into gun battle in the upper parking lot.
No injuries were reported and police are working to identify the suspects involved but the mall was evacuated Saturday afternoon and remained closed the remainder of the day with plans to reopen today at 11 a.m.
Outside, yellow police caution tape was strewn throughout the lot including around a gray Dodge Grand Caravan with a flattened tire and a shot-out broken side window.
Vanessa Twyman of Morton was working at the Dakota Watch Company kiosk near the main entrance of the mall around 1 p.m. when chaos broke out during the mall’s Family Fall Festival.
“It was unreal,” she said. “The cops they came running in with ... guns. They were like, ‘Hurry up and get out of the mall or get inside of the stores’ and they told people to shut the gate.”
Twyman and her coworker ran into the Yankee Candle store where they exited through the back door.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “I was nervous wreck. I was shaking. People out here with the kids, the kids were crying. It was a horrible scene.”
Andrew Rusch of Hatboro had just arrived at the mall to begin his 1 p.m. managerial shift at Journey’s.
“I went in and everybody was running out,” he said. “It was wild. There were about a hundred people sprinting at me. They all poured out literally as I walked in.”
Despite the situation, his first concern was for his employees, so he continued going forward until he got to his store.
“I wasn’t going to leave my people,” Rusch said. “I can’t abandon ship.”
Spencer’s employee Jeremy Winkler was speaking with a security guard when he got a radio call and ran.
Winkler looked outside his store and saw Ulta closing its gate.
“When we looked out, people just started running,” the Woodlyn resident said. “There were three or four customers in the store. People were outside. We were like, ‘Hey man, just come inside the store.’”
So, he took as many people as he could into his store, locked it up and moved them towards safety towards the back.
Ashley DiNardo of South Philadelphia was working at a table for Today’s Child Learning Center on the upper level near Macy’s when she and her colleague saw a fight break out.
“My employee that was with me was like, ‘There’s a fight,’” she said. “So, we called for security.”
But, DiNardo said, the groups split up. “One group went upstairs, one group went out towards Macy’s,” she said.
Then, she thought it was over.
“Maybe 15, 20 minutes later, everybody was running out of the mall,” she said. “So we ran into Macy’s. Because we didn’t know what to do, (we) left ... in the heat of the moment when you’re scared.”
When she got outside, she learned more of what happened.
“So I happened to come to my car and I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s all these gun holes everywhere,’ but not my car,” she said. “It was just scary. My body was shaking because I was so scared.”
Police said the incident began as a fight between two groups of males - one on the upper level, one on the lower level. It became physical near the Macy’s end and then spilled out into the parking lot where a gun battle occurred in front of the Ulta store. No injuries occurred but four to five vehicles were punctured by bullets or had glass broken, according to police.
“Once the two groups came outside the mall into the parking lot, we had as far as we know at least one shooter from each group exchange gunfire between the two groups,” Lt. Joe Sadoff of the Springfield Police Department said. “All the shooting occurred in the parking lot ... No shooting occurred in the mall. It was just a physical altercation between these two groups inside the mall.”
He added that there were no injuries at the mall.
“We don’t know the condition of anybody in those groups that left,” Sadoff said. “Right now, There’s no evidence there was any injuries or that anybody got hit.”
Sadoff said investigators believed that at least one group fled the mall in a vehicle in an unknown direction. He added that they are scouring security videos to get descriptions of those involved as none of those involved have yet been identified.
By the time officers from various jurisdictions got to the mall, those involved in those shootings were gone, he said.
Sadoff added, however, that investigators were scouring videos to gather more identifying information.
“We’re getting as much security video from the mall as we can at this point,” he said. “We’re hoping to get some decent video from out of the mall to at least identify vehicles, identify those that were involved.”
Many longtime residents were immediately reminded of the Springfield Mall shootings on Oct. 30, 1985, when mentally-ill Sylvia Seegrist opened fire at the site, killing three and wounding seven others. She was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Sadoff talked about how perilous the situation could have been, considering it was a packed mall on a Saturday afternoon.
“This is a terrible incident but it could’ve been a lot worse inside the mall with all the people in there,” he said. “I don’t think we would’ve been as fortunate as we were if the shooting occurred in the mall. I think we would’ve had a worse outcome. We are lucky that it came out to the lot.
“We’re lucky that with the gun fire that was exchanged that there were no pedestrians out here that were hit,” Sadoff said. “So for this type of incident, we were fortunate that it came outside.”