Jan 26, 2009 5:13 pm US/Central
Police Evacuate Mall After Report Of Gunman
SCHAUMBURG, Ill. (CBS) ―
A northwest suburban shopping mall was shut down and systematically evacuated Monday after a citizen reported seeing a man with a gun inside.
CBS 2's Mai Martinez reports police received a call about 11:20 a.m. from a citizen who reported seeing two suspicious men, one whom the citizen believed to be armed with a handgun, inside Woodfield Mall, according to Schaumburg police Sgt. John Nebl.
The suspects were initially spotted near an upper level entrance, referred to as door six, Nebl said. As a precautionary measure, Schaumburg police launched an extensive search inside and outside the mall.
Squad cars and heavily armed police officers remained at Woodfield Mall hours after Schaumburg police received the initial call. For several hours, as the mall remained on lockdown, the police searched the nearly 300 stores and businesses for the men in question.
"They weren't letting anyone in the mall or outside the mall, so that made me even more scared, because we're stuck with this guy in here," said Nicole Murkowski, a mall employee.
It was a very frightening experience for many of the shoppers and store employees locked inside.
"All of a sudden, we started [seeing] all these squad cars pulling up, and officers like I've never seen just come into the mall, and then they walked in, and then you see Woodfield security they were all out there, everybody was spread out and everybody was looking. We tried to walk out, and they stopped us and said nobody is going nowhere," said Glenn Cardin, a mall shopper.
Shoppers and mall employees scrambled to find safety as the officers swept through.
"They told us to get away from the gates and gather in the back of the store," said Lindsay O'Malley, another mall shopper.
O'Malley and her friends huddled together in the back of a store until officers told them it was safe to leave. The girls said it's an experience they won't soon forget.
"I was scared because I saw a lot of guns and stuff with the police, [I] didn't really know what was going on," said Jeanette Stadnicki who was shopping at the mall during the incident.
Officers received no other reports of suspicious people or criminal activities within the mall. No injuries have been reported and no arrests made.
The mall, at Golf and Meacham roads, has hundreds of stores and restaurants and is the number one tourist attraction in Illinois, according to the Woodfield Mall Web site.
CBS 2's Mai Martinez and the STNG Wire contributed to this report.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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