All Giants safe after shooting at Mall of America
Shopping center in Minneapolis was locked down
MINNEAPOLIS — Several Giants players and staffers, including GM Joe Schoen, were inside Minnesota’s Mall of America on Friday night when a 19-year-old was shot and killed, sending the country’s largest shopping center into lockdown.
But all of those Giants personnel are now accounted for and safe.
“Everyone is back in the hotel and accounted for now,” Giants senior VP of communications Pat Hanlon first told the Associated Press late Friday night.
The Giants were staying in a hotel adjacent to the mall in Bloomington, Minnesota. Several players and other staffers, including Schoen and play-by-play man Bob Papa, were in the mall when the situation unfolded.
The AP first learned about the Giants in the mall when a couple shoppers said they were locked down with some Giants players.
The team’s security team got everyone out safely by coordinating through alerts and text messages, Hanlon said Saturday morning.
Giants VP of security Jerry Meade and the security team sent out an alert when the incident occurred to let people know there had been an incident in the mall and that everyone should stay in the hotel or shelter in place, depending on where they were.
The players and staffers were asked to text Meade their locations so they could be retrieved by team security with help from the Bloomington police department once it was safe. All of the Giants’ people were accounted for and returned to the hotel within about 20 minutes of being given the go-ahead.
The Giants (8-5-1) were in town to take on the Minnesota Vikings (11-3) at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Saturday afternoon.