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Gunfire erupted at the South Shore Plaza in Braintree, Massachusetts, Friday afternoon, sending a 15-year-old girl to the hospital and causing a manhunt in the area that ended with two people in custody, police said.
Braintree police said two male suspects were taken into custody a short distance from the mall after they had fled on foot. The neighborhoods around the plaza had been urged to shelter in place and report any suspicious activity to police while officers were seen walking through backyards with guns drawn as they searched for the suspects.
The girl hurt in the shooting was taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
While officers had swarmed the mall after the initial 4:43 p.m. call of shots fired, police eventually said they believed it was a targeted incident of violence, not a random act or an “active shooter” incident.
A preliminary investigation revealed that a fight broke out between two groups of people that may know each other, which escalated into a shooting, police said in a news conference Friday evening.
Police also said that two MBTA buses will be picking people up at the Mary E Flaherty Elementary School gate, at the edge of the plaza parking lot, as authorities attempt to reunite shoppers with their families.
Stores at the mall were placed on lockdown, with shoppers slowly and carefully escorted out of the mall by police. The lockdown was lifted after over two hours.
Two people were taken into custody after a shooting at South Shore Plaza in Braintree, Massachusetts, and subsequent manhunt, police said in a news conference.
The shooting prompted chaos and confusion at the mall, according to witnesses who described a fight that escalated to gunfire.
A woman who was working inside Nordstrom’s at the time of the incident said she saw a large fight. She went to grab her phone to call police, when she heard the shooting, she said. The mall employee ran to the parking lot and was still visibly shaken when speaking to NBC10 Boston outside the mall.
“I just saw everything happen. I saw the guy shoot the gun. I don’t remember what he looks like. I kind of like blacked out for a minute,” she said. “I just saw them all fist fighting and screaming and then I heard shots and I just took cover and closed all the doors as soon as possible.”
Another woman who was shopping at Macy’s told NBC10 Boston she ducked inside a dressing room when a young girl came running through saying a man had a gun. After about eight minutes, the woman said, she escaped through a side door, where police met her and told her to run.
“I never experienced anything like this in my entire life,” she said. “It was the scariest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.”
Stores are on lockdown at the Braintree mall where SWAT teams have responded.
A man who was inside the mall at the time of the incident told NBC10 Boston, “Everyone just started running, screaming ‘shooting, shooting, run!’ So we all just ran out of the mall, down the hall, out the door. I didn’t see anything. I heard one or two shots and then just ran.”
Braintree police are asking anyone with video of the incident to assist their investigation by sending it to tips@braintreema.gov
The shooting comes at the start of the July Fourth holiday weekend, when many stores offer sales. And malls in Massachusetts were only able to reopen last month, after being closed like many other businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Several people who were inside the mall at the time of the shooting spoke with NBC10 Boston from the South Shore Plaza parking lot, where they shared what they saw and heard.
South Shore Plaza was the scene of another shooting three years ago. In that incident, in July 2017, the Braintree mall was also put on lockdown and evacuated. Authorities said at the time that incident appeared to be related to gang activity, with two gang members happening to cross paths inside of Macy’s.
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