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Man arrested after firing shots outside California mall

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:44:00 +0000

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. – A man was arrested Saturday after firing about 50 shots in the parking lot of a Southern California shopping mall, forcing a lockdown of stores crowded with holiday shoppers.

Marcos Gurrola, 42, of Garden Grove was taken into custody by bicycle police officers patrolling around the open-air Fashion Island mall around 4:30 p.m., police spokeswoman Cathy Lowe said. She said he fired into the air and onto the ground in the parking lot near a Macy's department store.

No one was injured, but the gunfire caused panic, coming just a day after a gunman killed 26 children and adults at a Connecticut elementary school, and days after a deadly mall shooting in Oregon. Some of the shoppers in California on Saturday said they ran, screaming as they looked for a safe shelter.

The mall was crowded with holiday shoppers.

Lowe says some stores voluntarily closed their doors and kept shoppers inside while police investigated.

Bret McGaughey, 22, of Laguna Beach, said he was with his mom in the Apple store at the upscale mall when shoppers ran to the rear of the store as employees locked the front entrance. He estimated that up to 100 people stayed in the back of the store for about 30 minutes until Apple employees announced that police said it was safe to reopen the doors.

Oregon shooter’s family and friends express shock

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:09:00 +0000

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- To police and witnesses, Jacob Tyler Roberts was a gunman on a mission, shooting numerous rounds from a semiautomatic rifle as he stalked through a Portland mall, ultimately killing two people and seriously injuring another. To Roberts' shocked friends and family, he was just Jake, a happy, easygoing 22-year-old who liked video games and talked about moving to Hawaii.

"Jake was never the violent type," Roberts' ex-girlfriend, Hannah Patricia Sansburn, told ABC News. "His main goal was to make you laugh, smile, make you feel comfortable. You can't reconcile the differences.

"I hate him for what he did, but I can't hate the person I knew because it was nothing like the person who would go into a mall and go on a rampage," she said.

The Clackamas County sheriff's office said Roberts had several fully loaded magazines when he arrived at the mall Tuesday. Roberts parked his 1996 green Volkswagen Jetta in front of the second-floor entrance to Macy's and walked through the store into the mall and began firing randomly in the food court.

He fatally shot Steven Mathew Forsyth, 45, and Cindy Ann Yuille, 54, the sheriff said. Kristina Shevchenko, 15, was wounded and in serious condition Wednesday.

Can we even talk about guns after the Oregon shooting?

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Another shooting, another chance to not talk about guns and the laws regulating their use. Last night’s shooting at an Oregon shopping mall was as horrific as any of the myriad recent mass shootings, with children and even the mall’s Santa fleeing for their lives from assault weapon fire that drowned out Christmas carols playing over the mall's PA.

But unlike the theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., it probably won’t reignite the debate over control because one side has so thoroughly shut down the discussion that the other side seems to have given up. Before the sun had even risen in Aurora the day after the shooting there earlier this year, the debate was on, with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a staunch advocate of gun control, demanding action. Others quickly followed. Senators and congressmen introduced new legislation, cable news brought in talking heads from both sides, and for a brief moment, gun control was dominating the political debate in a way it hadn’t since the 1990s.

Masked gunman opens fire on holiday shoppers

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:43:00 +0000

UPDATE 1.30 p.m. (EST): The Oregon gunman has been identified as 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts, reported NBC. According to police, the shooter used an AR 15 semi-automatic rifle that he had stolen from a person he knew, but motives for the shooting are still unknown.

UPDATE 11.00 a.m. (EST): Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts told ABC's "Good Morning America" that the shooter, as yet unnamed by police, seemed to have picked his victims at random. "It really was a killing of total strangers, to my knowledge at this point and time. He was really trying to kill as many people as possible," Roberts said (see video below).

9.45 a.m. (EST): Holiday shoppers in Oregon were plunged into terror Tuesday night when a masked gunman opened fire in a mall just outside of Portland, leaving three people dead including himself.

"Entire swaths of Clackamas Town Center turned silent, except for the blasts from the man's rifle and the ensuing screams. Even the mall's Santa dropped to the ground," reported CNN on the latest public shooting tragedy to hit the U.S..