Holiday shoppers were forced to shelter in place Saturday at the Great Mall in Milpitas after a man shot and injured himself, prompting a lockdown of the shopping center, authorities said.
Milpitas police said Sunday that they responded at about 5:16 p.m. Saturday to reports of shots fired inside the Great Mall at 11000 Great Mall Drive. When officers arrived, they found a 22-year-old man suffering from a self-inflicted non-life-threatening gunshot wound, police said.
On Monday, Capt. John Torrez of the Milpitas Police Department said in an email to this news organization that the shooting was not intentional.
“Based upon our investigation and the interview of the man in question, we know he was not intentionally trying to harm himself inside of the mall. The self-inflicted gunshot wound was accidental,” Torrez said.
“We also know there was nothing out of the ordinary that occurred before to the discharge of the firearm,” Torrez said.
Torrez said the man was not arrested in connection with the incident, and the police department will be “consulting the District Attorney’s Office regarding this investigation.”
Dozens of frightened shoppers holed up inside stores for safety after officers asked everyone inside to shelter in place while they swept through the interior of the mall for suspects and any additional victims, police said.
Officers escorted all customers and employees out of the mall to safety. Two unrelated medical emergencies occurred during the evacuation; both of those people were transported to a local hospital by paramedics.
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At around 9:30 p.m., the police department announced an all-clear, tweeting that teams had completed their searches and found no additional victims.
Responders were seen transporting one person on a stretcher from the mall, according to a photographer from AIO Filmz.
Other witnesses said that officers from San Jose police and other agencies also were at the mall assisting Milpitas police.
The incident took place six days before Christmas and during what is usually one of the busiest shopping weeks of the holiday season. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically restricted the number of shoppers inside Bay Area retailers and indoor malls. As coronavirus cases surge in the Bay Area, Santa Clara County malls can only operate at 20 percent capacity with common areas and food courts closed.
Shopper Angelo Palma described a chaotic scene in which people suddenly started running: “My friend said, ‘Yo bro!’ I’m like, ‘Yo, what happened? Why is everyone running? What the hell?’ ”
Palma said people were running one direction, then another and “people were falling.” He then described a heavily armed police presence. “It’s crazy,” Palma said.
Milpitas resident Nikhil Saraf, who lives across the street from the mall, said he looked out his living room window and saw multiple police vehicles converge on the indoor mall, one of the largest in Northern California. Saraf said he later saw people being escorted out of the mall.
Other videos showed customers quickly walking or running out of the mall, one by one, with hands raised. Some carried carried shopping bags, and some fell into the arms of people waiting for them on the outside.
Staff writer Joseph Geha contributed to this article.
