14 DAY TRIAL // A shooting took place at Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, New Jersey yesterday, and police are still looking for the gunman.
An unidentified man opened fire at about 9:20 p.m. near the Nordstrom department store on the second level of the mall, PIX 11 reports. He came in through California Pizza Kitchen dressed in black armor and a black helmet.
“He was wearing full body armor, a helmet and everything; he walked right past the movers and told them, like ‘I’m not going to hurt you’ and he walked all the way over toward the Nordstrom side and that’s where the gunshots were fired,” Apple customer Enrique Rodriguez says.
The shooter got away and police found ammo and a change of clothes inside the mall.
The NY Post writes that authorities are looking for a 20-year-old man who may be the shooter. He has not been charged at this point.
20-year-old Richard Shoop of Teaneck, New Jersey works near the mall, at a pizzeria. He has been missing since yesterday.
“Is this because of my son Richard at the mall. I am heartbroken over this. He called me,” his father said, when police paid him a visit, at 1 a.m. Tuesday.
The gunman did not aim at any customers, and nobody was injured in the bizarre incident.
“I don’t know if he was aiming at cameras, or aiming at lights,” Rodriguez remembers.
“He wasn’t shooting the people, he was just walking quite calmly,” another witness adds.
The shooter attacked before closing time at the mall, at 9.30 p.m. He was very quick and disappeared before police arrived.
“I made sure to get all my people out off the store then we started running out of the mall with our hands up along with everyone else,” mall employee Mercedez Heggs describes.