Hundreds of police officers descended on the sprawling Garden State Plaza Mall in Paramus, N.J., Monday night after multiple shoppers reported a gunman with a long rifle fired shots inside the mall around 9:15 p.m. No one was reported injured, officials said.
At midnight Tuesday, as my colleague, Emma Fitzsimmons, reported, thousands of people remained trapped inside the mall, as heavily armed police officers searched the mall’s 300 stores for the gunman and evacuated people in small groups. After the gunshots, some people fled the mall as others ducked into stores. Some store managers quickly pulled down security gates and turned off the lights, ordering shoppers to move to the back or fall to the floor. The gunman had not been located as of early Tuesday.
Outside the mall, witnesses reported seeing a gunman wearing what looked like a motorcycle helmet.
During the ordeal, Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor at large for the National Review Online, was among those who posted observations, images and videos on social media from inside the mall. She said she was in the back of a restaurant at Nordstrom’s.
