TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — A shooting inside Park Place Mall left two people wounded Wednesday night. Police have not arrested a suspect. KGUN9 talked with people who witnessed the shooting close up.
Just imagine the situation at Park Place Mall–there’s a lot of peopleincluding plenty of children —there’s a fight and then there’s gunfire.
Ruby was with a group of friends when she saw a fist fight turn into something even worse.
“We were probably about 20 feet away, maybe 10 feet, like, really close, and I just saw the gun come out, and then I saw them start shooting, and we started running.”
Jayda took video of the shooting and shared it with KGUN9. We are obscuring her face and Ruby’s for their safety.
Jayda says she and her friends had no time to really absorb what was happening. They just knew they needed to run.
“We were so shocked. We were screaming when we got back, like, in the store, he was like, get all the way to the back. So we went all the way to the back, and we're, like, panicking. We don't know what to do. It was awful.”
The shooting was the talk of the shop at Icon Barber Lounge. Owner Anjwaun Bobo was at the Mall—-with his eight year old daughter when the bullets started flying.
He heard the shots, saw the hysteria, and saw one victim on the floor as he rushed to get his little girl safely out of the play area.
“My adrenaline kicked in. I was happy and thrilled that I saw her, but I was also scared, because there was so many kids and babies in that area, especially mine, and they opened fire not even three feet from the play area where the kids are playing right in the food court.”
Looking back at the incident, Ruby says, “I feel like we really need to put more effort into making sure that underage people don't have guns. They looked around our age, yeah, really young that it's just so sad that the mall should be a place where people could go and shop and have fun with their kids and not be scared to get shot.”
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
