Two young men were shot at Southcenter Mall at about 3:45 p.m. Saturday and were taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with serious injuries, according to a spokesman for the Tukwila Police Department.
The mall was filled with thousands of holiday shoppers.
The shooting forced a lockdown of the mall so the gunman couldn’t escape with the fleeing shoppers. Shoppers then were evacuated, according to Mike Murphy with the Tukwila Police Department.
The gunman was still at large after the shooting.
Some shoppers were taken to back rooms with store workers for safety and others were taken through non-public corridors to exit the stores.
Police from agencies throughout South King County, including Renton, and the Washington State Patrol responded.
The gunman is described as a black male in his late teens or early 20s, 5-foot-6 and 145 pounds. He was wearing a black jumpsuit-like outfit with red piping.
Police were reviewing security tapes at the mall in an effort to see the shooter, according to Murphy. The shooting occurred roughly below the Food Court, which is on the second floor of the new multimillion-addition to the mall.
Murphy didn’t have an exact count of the number of shots that were fired.
Police were stationed at most exits, according to a shopper at the mall. Many of the shoppers have returned to their cars, although the parking lot and streets near the mall were in gridlock.
“People were running like crazy,” the shopper said.
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