In what has become an all-too-familiar American ritual, a mall in northern New Jersey was turned into a scary crime scene last night as a man randomly opened fire, hitting no one but eventually fatally shooting himself in the back area of the Garden State Plaza in Paramus.
Police authorities this morning identified the man as Richard Shoop, 20, who they said had a history of drug abuse. His body wasn’t recovered until 3:20 a.m., after many hours during which police said he was still at large.
Maria Rocha told her husband Fabio that she came face-to-face with a man dressed in black with a “big gun” while she was shopping at Nordstrom. She ran before she got a look at his face. She called her husband while she was trying to find a place to hide, he told the New York Times.
Rocha said that after he realized that his wife was not playing a prank on him, he said, “I told her to stay there and not move.”
“Thankfully, there were no injuries reported,” Jeanne Baratta, a spokeswoman for the Bergen County executive, said Monday night.
The mall was swarmed by dozens of police officers, a SWAT team and F.B.I. agents shortly before it was due to close at 9:30 p.m. Monday. According to media reports, police released people from the mall in small groups late on Monday night—many of them workers in short-sleeved uniforms who weren’t able to retrieve their coats.
About 20 miles northwest of downtown Manhattan, the mall is one of the largest in New Jersey, with about 2 million square feet of space, more than 250 stores and restaurants, and a movie theater.
As usual, there were the tweets coming from the mall at the time of the incident, with one woman, Kathryn Jean Lopez, posting: “Folks are nervous in here please just say a prayer. … There is screaming.”
She posted a photo from inside the Nordstrom store showing people sitting on the floor, checking their phones.
Alexa Tom, 28, a sales associate at Neiman Marcus, said employees and shoppers were escorted into the stockroom and were patted down by a SWAT team before they were escorted outside by armed officers.
“It was like a movie,” she said. “They had their guns pointed up as they took us — just in case they would need to take action.”