San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Milpitas police shut Great Mall after shooting
Milpitas police were investigating a shooting at the Great Mall on Saturday evening, prompting a lockdown of the mall’s stores while law enforcement combed the shopping center.
Police released few details about the incident, but said on Twitter: “Out of an abundance of caution we have asked all stores to shelterinplace while officers continue assessing the situation.”
The incident drew a heavy response from law enforcement and other first responders. By 7: 30 p. m., police said they were “systematically searching all stores that were shelteringinplace,” and escorting employees and shoppers out of the mall and into the parking lot.
“Officers and detectives remain on scene and are actively investigating this incident,” Milpitas police tweeted at 8 p. m.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether anybody had been injured, or whether anybody had been taken in custody.
Video posted on social media that appears to be taken from the mall shows a group of people exiting out the back door of a store. Suddenly, at the end of a long hallway, a group of police officers opens a pair of double doors, asking members of the group to show their hands.
The group tells police that about 40 people are in the store. “Go inside, and lock yourself in,” one officer tells the group.
Viviana De Anda, 43, of San Jose was shopping for clothes for her sons for Christmas at Abercrombie & Fitch with her husband, Mario Diaz.
“All of a sudden I hear people screaming and people coming in the store,” De Anda said. “People started pushing me, like ‘“Go run, go run to the back!’”
She and her husband ran eventually ran into a nearby Hollister store, where she joined dozens of others in the back of the stockroom warehouse. They sat on the floor, waiting for roughly two hours. Her 16yearold daughter was shopping in the mall at the same time with her boyfriend. Shortly before 8 p. m., De Anda was still waiting outside the mall for her daughter, who was still holed up in one of the stockrooms of the Kate Spade store. She said she doesn’t know what happened but can't wait to hug her daughter.
The scene outside of the shopping center was relatively calm shortly after 7 p. m, with about a halfdozen people dotting yellow crimescene tape that cut through the Great Mall’s parking lot, watching the police at the mall’s entrance next to a Starbucks and scrolling through social media. A helicopter circled overhead and officers gathered in a semicircle just outside the mall entrance. A line of patrol vehicles from San Jose Police Department and Santa Clara County Sheriff ran parallel to the mall, stretching past an
Old Navy Outlet and Dicks Sporting Goods, all with their lights flashing.
By about 7: 10 p. m., police appeared to be letting small groups of people exit the mall. One group of several dozen, many carrying plastic shopping bags, shuffled toward the exit. Another group could be seen putting their hands on their heads while walking toward the exit, only dropping them to their sides once they had passed through the threshold.
They declined to speak with the media: “No, we’re scared,” one person said.
The shooting came at the height of what normally would have been a busy holiday shopping season. But under Santa Clara County’s regional stayathome order, retail capacity is capped at 20%, meaning there were almost certainly fewer people in the mall than there would normally have been around this time of year.