The way it played out for us was
we were just heading out to go
see on my nieces and we stopped
there to have a bite to eat.
So we went in the fat burger and we're
enjoying our meal and then we hd
some melee outside where it just
started sounding like a frenzy d
people running around and and t.
Immediately after that we heard
gunshots and I immediately toldy
daughter to go up against the counter.
They had a a metal counter there
and I put myself between her and
anything else because that's my child.
We got to the mall.
We decided to go shopping.
My daughter just got a job,
so she had her first paycheck.
So she obviously wanted to
spend all her money at the mall.
So we did our shopping.
It was packed there.
I mean we I think we got there
like around 2:00 o'clock.
And we actually had to circle around a
few times to find a parking spot because
it was it was down packed there today.
So we did our shopping.
We were pretty much finished.
We had stopped outside the Converse store.
We were just waiting to cross over our car.
Our car was parked like right in
the the middle of the parking l.
And all of a sudden, you know,
we just heard like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
And we kind of looked at
each other and we're like,
is that fireworks or like a car backfiring?
Because it sounded like a little
far away and then, you know,
probably within 10 seconds.
PP Pop.
And it was like right in front of us.
There was sparks flying, There was smoke.
Just natural instinct was just, I docked.
I looked behind me.
My daughter had already run
into the Converse store,
so I pretty much crawled right
into the Converse store.
We ran all the way into the bac.
We were just yelling at the employees
to lock the door, Lock the door.
There's, you know,
there's a shooting outside.
And he just guided us all the wy
into the back of the store where
where he locked the door behind.
We kind of just hung out there ,
you know,
a little bit until we were just
trying to gather our thoughts
to like what just happened.
So we were both in like the bacf
the store and we were eating. Ad
I don't know it it all
kind of happened so fast.
We just started seeing like
these families started running
into the back of the store.
And they they couldn't really sk
English so all they were saying was shoot
shoot bang like like trying to explain.
So I I ran out the front and any
coworker Marcus was talking about how
there was a shooting going on outside.
And so I told him to lock the
door and we all started like
running into the back hallway
then all the rooms go into
all the stores go into. We
had basically split up almost immediately.
So when that family came in the back,
I had escorted them where it's
basically just a giant like
hallway where it also double s s
a tornado shelter I'm pretty su.
And so while I was back there
with one of my coworkers,
Jerry was still at what those pretzels,
making sure everybody was all good up
there and while we were back th.
There was a scare at one point e
someone had thought that the shr
had come in from the other side
of the hallway and everybody ha.
Well, everybody was like we all
had run as fast as we could to
the closest unlocked door,
which just so happened to be a storage room.
And I hid behind a freezer.
And we everybody thought that
we were doomed because at that
point there still were no cops.
We just thought that there was a shooter
in the hallway ready to just get everybody,
and it was very scary.
I seriously thought that I
was not going to make it out.
Yeah, that was that was like,
truly horrifying.
Yeah, it I it's it was almost like when
everyone was running, it was alt
like like a zombie apocalypse almost.
That's how I like to explain it,
cuz it's seriously like everyone
was crawling all over each othe.
And it was. It was so scary.
It's like people were screaming.
It was it was really scary.
My daughter and I were inside of H&amp;M.
We were actually all inside of H&amp;M
before the shooting took place.
My parents had went outside to
wait on us just to, you know,
hang outside and wait for us to come out.
And so my daughter and I were
still in H&amp;M store tryin
items in the fitting area when.
I heard what I thought was construction,
really. I mean in the fitting r,
over the noise, over the music,
I could hear like boom, boom, b.
And so I thought at first, you ,
they're doing construction on the building
because it was so close and so .
And so as I began to come
out of the fitting room,
I saw everybody that was in the front,
in the middle of the store
come running towards the fit,
the fitting area.
Where we were,
so everybody got into an immedie
panic saying someone shooting,
someone shooting.