Shooting at a shopping mall near Kansas City on Friday (November 10) sent panicked shoppers running for cover and wounded four. The police have said that the shooting took place around 2:20 pm at Independence Center. One of the wounded is in critical condition as the person is hit in the head. The condition of other three was not immediately clear.
Associated Press quoted a police officer who said that three people were taken into custody near the mall as they were fleeing in a vehicle.
It was not immediately certain why did the shooting take place but it has been reported that it took place after a conflict between two groups.
Watch | India-US defence ministers discuss China, Indo-Pacific
Nick Stephens, one of the people who were at the shopping mall when the shooting took place said that when the guns first rang out he heard the sound but did not think much of it as he didn’t realise it was gunfire.
“Then I saw people looking for a hiding spot,” he told KMBC-TV
“When I saw people actually running, I grabbed my stuff and ‘we gotta go.’ The mall security told everyone to get out.”
“I was watching video on my phone and volume all the way up and I heard what sounded like an automatic gun,” he said. “I’m thinking someone fell. I see people running and telling us to go. He’s got a gun.”
KCUR 89.3 quoted Independence Center director of leasing Holly Solomon who said police arrived “within minutes”.
“It happened fast,” she said. “They were barely inside the mall. They ran into the parking lot where they were almost immediately taken into custody, is my understanding.”
The Independence Center is about 16 kilometres (10 miles) from Kansas City. The shopping mall has seen violence in past. In 2020, large fights broke out here, one involved as many as 500 people. This had led authorities to impose a curfew. In 2018, a teenager died after being shot outside the mall. In the year 2012, a shooting wounded two people.
