Two people were shot and a Texas mall was plunged into lockdown after a gun was pulled during a heated argument, cops say.
Police raced to Arlington Parks Mall at around 7:30pm on Thursday evening in Arlington Texas, after two groups clashed in a corridor near the ice skating rink.
The two shot individuals were rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Their status is currently unclear, and it is not known if they were part of the argument or bystanders.
According to CBS News, an eyewitness said he saw three people attack a man in the middle of the mall, before one of the attackers pulled out a gun and fired a shot into the air.
Cops say the shooter is still at large and is being sought, although officials are yet to release a description and believe it to be an isolated incident with no further threat to the public.
Customers were seen being evacuated from Arlington Parks Mall on Thursday evening as a large police presence responded to a shooting that left two people in the hospital
After officials evacuated the area and placed the building on lockdown, footage emerged showing the usually-busy mall eerily quiet as terrified customers fled.
Authorities said the mall already had heightened security in operation including non-uniform officers over the holiday period, and praised their quick response locking down the mall.
Witness Camile Labista, 13, said her day out at the mall with her friends descended into chaos after the sound of a shot rang out across the mall.
She told Fox4 she hid in a storage bin until she could call her parents.
‘We were waiting in line for Starbucks, and all of a sudden we hear this loud bang,’ she said. ‘We thought it was like a hockey stick maybe breaking because they were inside playing hockey.
‘But we just saw everyone running. And so we ran, grabbed my two closest friends with me. And so we just ran into the Miss A. They hid us in a storage unit with the lights out and our phones on silent.
‘And we were just praying, waiting for our family, calling them, making sure everything’s okay.’
The shooting is not believed by officials to be a mass shooting or an attempt to cause a mass casualty event, and the mall will re-open as usual on Friday.