Saturday - 1/25/2014, 1:08pm ETNo further information is available right now.
WASHINGTON - Howard County Police say that three people have been killed in a shooting at the Columbia Mall.
Police have not identified any of the victims, but say that one of the dead is the suspected shooter. They say that they believe the mall is secure, but that people inside should wait for word from the police.
Spokeswoman Denise Weist, of the Howard County Fire and Rescue Department, says the department received the call at about 11:15 a.m. Saturday.
WTOP's Ari Ashe, on the scene, says the report said that the shots were coming from the JC Penney.
Ashe says at least 100 police officers have descended on the mall from Howard, Anne Arundel and Montgomery Counties, as well as the Maryland State Police. SWAT units and officers in fatigues were walking around the scene and helicopters were flying overhead.
Police and fire units are "everywhere you look," Ashe says. "Most of the mall has been taped off ... It is locked down fully."
One man who was in the food court at the time told WTOP that he was having lunch with his family when he heard four shots - "one shot, then two more, then a final one." He says he and his group "huddled under a table" and then "booked it out of there."
His guess is that the shooting happened on the lower level. "It was kind of surreal," he said, adding that he froze for a moment at first. "You hear about it on TV and you don't think you're going to be a part of it."
Another man, who was driving toward the mall, told WTOP that he saw "a whole lot of people in big bunches running away" and "a whole lot of police driving into the mall from all over."
Columbia Mall's web page
This can't be true.
ReplyDeleteMaryland is a gun free zone. . .
Strange: authorities ran into difficulty in identifying the gunman because of concerns that he might be carrying explosives.
ReplyDeleteLink for the above.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545893/Three-dead-gunman-opens-fire-suburban-Baltimore-mall-food-court.html
ReplyDeletePolice say the gunman killed Briana Benlolo, 21, and Tyler Johnson, 25, with a shotgun before turning it on himself just before 11:15 a.m. Saturday morning in an upstairs Zumiez skate shop at the Mall in Columbia.
The shooting may have been the climax of a domestic dispute between Benlolo, her boyfriend and an ex-boyfriend who fired the shots
The victims were identified but the shooter's identity remains elusive. Hmmmmm
According to Facebook, Benlolo was a manager at the store. She’s originally from Florida and hadn’t been in Maryland very long.
ReplyDeleteJohnson only started working at Zumiez over the holiday season, being hired in November.
The shooter, who police say then turned the gun on himself, has not been identified.
Witnesses, however, describe him as young, between 18-21, with tan khaki pants, a white shirt and suspenders.
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2014/01/25/victims-fatally-shot-at-mall-in-columbia-both-worked-at-zumiez-store/
*****
5. Benlolo is a Mother
Read more at: http://www.heavy.com/news/2014/01/brianna-benlolo-tyler-johnson-shooting-murder/
Benlolo, who listed Cocoa Beach as a hometown on her Facebook page, lived on Patrick Air Force Base up until about four years ago when her father, Aaron Benlolo, was reassigned to Colorado Springs, Colo.,
ReplyDeletehttp://www.floridatoday.com/viewart/20140125/NEWS01/301260030/Maryland-mall-shooting-victim-once-lived-Patrick-AFB
*****
COLUMBIA, Md. (AP) — Police say they disabled crude attempts at explosive devices that were found in a bag carried by a gunman to a deadly shooting at a Maryland mall....Police say they have tentatively identified the gunman but are declining to identify him while they follow up on leads
http://news.yahoo.com/police-disable-devices-found-md-gunman-39-bag-033612656.html;_ylt=A2KJ3Ce_heRSq2oAkiJDDex_
Yesterday, when I was watching news coverage of the event, I heard one eye witness say, "He looked either Hispanic or Arab."
ReplyDeleteOf course, eye witnesses are not necessarily reliable. On the other hand, they CAN be.
CNN was trying to insist that the shooting was workplace violence or a domestic dispute. The Howard County Police said that the news media should not be speculating in that fashion.
I will not jump to conclusions, but I want to point out something.
ReplyDeleteZumiez, the store where the shooting occurred, sells snowboards -- and has a big ad related to snowboards on its front page. Sochi Olympics connection?
Columbia Mall has not been cleared and remains closed today (Sunday). Bomb-sniffing dogs are still at work.
Police have identified the gunman in the Maryland mall shooting as a 19 year old from suburban Washington.
ReplyDeleteHoward County Police Chief William McMahon said Darion Marcus Aguilar of College Park, Md., arrived at the mall shortly after 10 a.m. on Saturday armed with a Mossburg 12-gauge shotgun and used it to kill two people at a store on the upper level of the Mall of Columbia before killing himself.
http://www.wboc.com/story/24549915/police-identify-shooter-in-maryland-mall-shooting
ReplyDeleteYoung mom, 21, and fiance, 25, are shot dead in Zumiez skate shop murder-suicide by jealous 'ex-boyfriend' who was strapped with handmade bombs
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2546215/Young-mom-21-fiance-25-shot-dead-Zumiez-skate-shop-murder-suicide-jealous-ex-boyfriend-strapped-handmade-bombs.html#ixzz2rWDRV7BD
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