In what San Bruno police Chief Ed Barberini is calling "a silly, stupid, tragic event," two possibly teenage shooters shot "at each other, or someone else" in the middle of a busy shopping mall Tuesday afternoon, leaving two teenagers with grave injuries.
Two suspects appear to have fled the scene in the chaos following the shots being fired at the Shops at Tanforan, and neither has been apprehended. The suspects were only described as two males, and one was wearing a dark green hoodie.
As the Chronicle reports, the shooting broke out around 4 p.m. near a T-Mobile store, and during a matinee screening of Spider-Man: Far From Home at the mall movie theater. The shooting caused pandemonium in the mall, with many fearing a mass-shooting incident. Police who swarmed the scene appeared armed and prepared for such an event.
Barnes & Noble employee Paula Silva tells ABC 7 that she corralled all the customers and staff in the store into a stockroom, locked the door and shut off all the lights.
Believing the suspects may have fled to BART, the transit agency shut down San Bruno Station. Not long after, due to unspecified reports, BART also shut down 12th Street Station in Oakland, where police reported searched a train car by car for the suspects. The entire BART system was impacted by delays due to the two closures on two sides of the Bay, and travelers to SFO found themselves stuck braving traffic on 101 or else have to deal with a bus bridge from South San Francisco. (After initially running trains through San Bruno Station without stopping, the station was then shut to all train traffic.)
The two teen victims were reported to be in critical and serious condition, respectively, having both suffered wounds to their "lower extremities" — an initial report from an eyewitness given to KPIX suggested that one of the victims was shot in the stomach. Given that there were apparently two suspects and two shooters, it may be that one or both of the suspects fired shots, or that one of the victims fired a gun as well. Early reports suggested there were between six and eight shots fired.
As Barberini said to ABC 7, "Any shooting is a tragic, silly, stupid event. When you do it in a shopping mall or any type of area where there is going to be a lot of people, shows a true disregard and it's a senseless act."
