Terrified shoppers run for their lives after gunfire breaks out at a mall in Washington State

Black Friday shoppers were seen running for cover after a suspected gunman terrorized people at a shopping mall in Durham, North Carolina, which was crowded with shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving. 

Three people were shot in the chaos and three others injured during the incident, which occurred following an apparent fight on Friday at a crowded mall in Durham. The shooting happened at around 3:20pm.

Later on Friday evening, authorities say shots were fired near a food court at a mall in Tacoma, Washington.

At least one person was struck and injured at the Tacoma Mall just after 7pm, Pierce County Sheriff´s Sgt. Darren Moss said.

Hundreds of shoppers sheltered in place or hid inside stores, which immediately went into lockdown.

More than 60 law enforcement officers from Tacoma, Pierce County, Lakewood, Puyallup and the Washington State Patrol raced to the scene.

‘We´re sending people inside to do a coordinated search,’ Moss said.

The three people were hurt in North Carolina were injured during the evacuation. They include a 10-year-old who was hurt by a bullet ricocheting. The child was taken to a local hospital with injuries not thought to be life-threatening.

Authorities said in the late afternoon that one person was detained and there was no further threat to the public. A bystander described ‘mass hysteria’ on one of the busiest shopping days of the year as shoppers ducked into stores for cover or ran for the exits. 

‘DPD is investigating a shooting incident at The Streets at Southpoint,’ police in Durham, North Carolina, tweeted on Friday. 

‘The mall is being evacuated and will be closed while DPD investigates the incident. Motorists are advised to avoid the area. There is no further threat at the mall.’ 

‘The shootings in this city have got to stop,’ said Durham Police Chief Patrice Andrews who revealed the shooting happened after an argument broke out between two groups who knew each other.

She said another three people were injured as shoppers rushed for exits following the shooting.

She said those involved in the fight that led to the shooting fled, but she vowed more arrests adding there was no further threat to the public.

‘This is not a situation where someone came into the mall and indiscriminately began firing,’ she said. 

The mall said on its website that it was closed until further notice but did not elaborate. 

Traffic could be seen snaked around the outside of the mall, with lines of cars trying to exit the parking lot, and numerous police cars with lights flashing outside a department store. 

Shoppers said crowds of people began to run out of the mall after the noisy altercation that began with yelling and included what sounded like gunshots.

Video captured a chaotic scene after the shots echoed through the mall, with some people taking cover in stores and others rushing for the exits.

Angela Lloyd had gone to Southpoint with family members to start her Christmas shopping. She said she was walking out of a store when the chaos erupted.

‘I just hear shots firing, and as soon as that happened, everybody just kind of turned around and started running and screaming,’ she said in a phone interview. ‘Some people were running into stores, some people were almost crawling into stores. Just like mass hysteria.’

She took cover in a store herself, and she and others were directed to the dressing rooms in the back. One customer played a police scanner on his cellphone and kept people updated on what he heard, she said.

Her husband, Craig Lloyd, had just left the mall and was heading home to the town of Efland about 20 miles away when his wife called him from the dressing room.

‘She said `There’s gunshots. They’ve got us locked in the store,´’ Craig Lloyd said in a phone interview. ‘I turned around and went back to the mall.’

When he got back to the shopping center, Craig Lloyd said he observed a chaotic scene with some exiting the mall with their hands up and others like him trying to find loved ones. His wife was allowed to leave the mall more than an hour later.

Across the country, another shooting occurred outside a Walmart store in Washington State. 

Several shots were reportedly fired outside the store in Kennewick in southeast Washington State at around 12.30pm local time on Friday afternoon.   

It’s not known if anyone was hurt or for how long the shooting went on for but one eyewitness is said to have heard six shots fired. 

Police explained how the suspect tired to steal merchandise but was confronted by a security guard in the parking lot at which point the man pulled out a weapon. 

The loss prevention officer who also had a gun then shot the armed suspect who fled. 

It saw police from several different agencies descend on the scene including officers from KDP, as well as Benton County Sheriff’s deputies, and Washington State Patrol Troopers.

The Kennewick Police Department later confirmed that suspect had been detained after searching a nearby home and the scene was secured with a large portion of the parking lot blocked off.  

Away from This year’s Black Friday sales have kicked off with smaller lines and calmer crowds as many Americans choose to shop online or avoid them altogether because of soaring prices brought on by the supply chain shortage.  

Frenzied scenes of customers thronging through the doors of department stores, big box outlets and malls were replaced this morning by muted lines of patient shoppers – with other businesses opening their doors early to no lines at all. 

Early figures for Black Friday 2021 show sales are up 12.1 per cent in a year, according to Mastercard, with the East Coast currently driving that sales spike, because its stores have been open for longer today. 

Meanwhile, online sales are also soaring – up by 5 per cent in a year, with in-store sales up an impressive 40 per cent from Black Friday 2020, when surging COVID and no vaccines left Americans reluctant to step outside.  

While the lines are not as packed and malls are not as chaotic as seen in the past during the retail holiday, sales are expected to go up 20 percent compared to last year, when the country was still in the midst of the pandemic. 

Buoyed by solid hiring, healthy pay gains and substantial savings, customers are returning to stores and splurging on all types of items. 

But the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with labor and supply shortages means prices are also set to be up to 17 per cent higher.  

Shortages of shipping containers and truckers have helped to delay deliveries while inflation continues to creep. 

The combination of not finding the right item at the right price – in addition to a labor shortage that makes it more difficult for businesses to respond to customer needs – could make for a less festive mood.

Shoppers are expected to pay on average of between five per cent to 17 per cent more for toys, clothing, appliances, TVs and others purchases on Black Friday this year compared with last year, according to Aurelien Duthoit, senior sector advisor at Allianz Research. 

TVs will see the highest price hike on average, up 17 per cent from a year ago, according to the research firm. That´s because whatever discounts available will be applied to goods that are already expensive.

‘I think it is going to be a messy holiday season,’ said Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail. 

‘It will be a bit frustrating for retailers, consumers and the workers. We are going to see long lines. We are going to see messier stores. We are going to see delays as you collect online orders.’

Meanwhile, online sales over the period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday are also predicted to reach as high as $36.4billion, up by nearly $2billion on last year.

However, not all shoppers are taking part in the shopping season this year, with the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index suggesting consumer confidence has hit a 10-year low.

And CNBC reports a survey by Deloitte has found that as many as 11.5 per cent of people are planning to sit out the holiday season by not purchasing any gifts this year. 

This represents a record high since the firm first began tracking the statistic. 

Their survey also found that high-income households will spend up to five times more this holiday season than low-income families. 

Speaking about the finding, Deloitte’s executive director Steven Rogers said: ‘This tale of two holidays is a pretty good reflection of the tale of two pandemics, right?

‘What starts off as a health crisis turns into a financial crisis if you’re in the lower-income [bracket].’

‘Those of us who have investments in 401ks did quite well. ‘You can see from 2019 to 2021, the lower income group is spending almost half of what they used to spend. And the higher income group is almost double what they used to spend two years ago.’

For years, Black Friday has been losing significance amongst shoppers, and since 2011, stores jumpstarted the holiday shopping season by opening their doors on Thanksgiving to compete with Amazon and other rising online threats. 

But the shift merely cannibalized Black Friday sales. The shopping bonanza was further diluted when stores started marketing Black Friday sales for the full week and then later for the month.

The pandemic further diminished the importance of the Black Friday event, though some experts still believe it will again be the busiest day of the year. 

Last year, retailers started to offer the big holiday sales earlier in October in an effort to spread out shopping for safety reasons and to smooth out online shipping peaks. 

They also got rid of the Thanksgiving Day in-store shopping event and pushed all their discounts online. 

This year, retailers are embracing a similar strategy, though they are now pushing holiday discounts in stores as well.

Despite all the challenges, experts believe that sales for the Thanksgiving week and overall season will be strong.

U.S. retail sales, excluding auto and gas, from this past Monday through Sunday are expected to increase 10% from last year and 12.2% from the 2019 holiday season, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures overall retail sales across all payment types including cash and check.

Online sales are forecast to increase 7.1% for that week, a slowdown from the massive 46.4% gain in the same period a year ago when shoppers collectively pivoted to the internet instead of shopping in person, according to Mastercard. 

For the overall holiday season, online sales should increase 10% from a year ago, compared with a 33% increase last year, according to Adobe Digital Economy Index.

Sales on Black Friday are expected to surge 20% from a year ago as store traffic comes back.

For the November and December period, the National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, predicts that sales will increase between 8.5% and 10.5%. 

Holiday sales increased 8.2% in 2020 when shoppers, locked down during the early part of the pandemic, spent their money on pajamas and home goods.

Source: dailymail