The 17-year-old is facing numerous charges of a serious crime related to Friday’s shooting at Eastridge’s Eastridge shopping center, which injured three people and sparked a massive police response.
GEMS said it had transported three people to the KaroMont Regional Medical Center with gunshot wounds. None of the injuries are life-threatening.
During the initial response, witnesses told officers they saw a possible suspect fleeing a mall in a nearby wooded area. Police in Gastonia (North Carolina) found the 17-year-old boy in the woods with a gun nearby.
Police detained the teenager without incident and after an interview with him accused him of numerous crimes related to the shooting of multiple victims in Eastridge Mall. Police did not release the name of the teenager suspected of the shooting due to his age.
The district prosecutor’s office will have to ask permission from a judge to charge the juvenile as an adult.
Detectives continue to work to determine the motive for these shootings. Police are also trying to establish whether there are links between the suspects and the three shot.
Police now say all those injured in the shooting were shot in the mall’s parking lot and that the victims fled inside the mall’s dining area after being shot.
Detectives also found that the male victim, believed to be the fourth person to be shot in the incident and being transported to a Charlotte hospital on his own, was not shot during the Eastridge Mall incident. The man is now believed to have been shot in a neighboring jurisdiction, according to police.
Police officers in Gastonia stormed Eastridge Mall with their weapons removed after a 911 call at 12:10 p.m.
Emergency workers first found an elderly man outside the mall near the restaurant, suffering from a gunshot wound. Officials were told there were additional casualties in the mall’s dining area. Officers entered the mall and found an elderly woman and an elderly man with gunshot wounds.
Employees then walked through the mall shop by store to help workers and shoppers get out safely.
“Thank God, none of the injuries are life-threatening,” said Police Chief Travis Brittany.
Police have handed over the mall to businesses, but it is unclear when it will reopen the mall.
Gerardo Ugalde from Gastonia said he was in the DMV when he heard three to four shots: “Bang! Bang!”
“And then people were running, screaming and crying,” he said.
Ugalde saw two of the people who had been shot, a young man with what looked like wounds to his arm and leg, and a young woman about the same age with a leg wound.
SHOOTING
GPD is investigating a shooting at N. New Hope’s Eastridge Mall.
3 people were shot. There is currently no active threat
Avoid the mall.
The updates have been published and the information has been confirmed.
Call rcvd at 12:10 p.m.
– Gastonia Police (@GPDNC) June 10, 2022
As other people ran, “I was frozen,” Ugalde said.
Dallas’ Brett Benfield said he was at Bath and Body Works when employees closed the store. He and other customers waited in the back for about 20 minutes, until, he said, “they didn’t tell us we had to evacuate.”
At the time, he said, police had flooded the parking lot. Benfield said he initially thought someone had brought a gun to the mall and others had overreacted. He was shocked to hear that three people had been shot.
“I’m just amazed that something like this could happen in Gaston County,” Benfield said.
Gazette photo editor Mike Hensdil saw GEMS remove two people in wheelchairs from the Food Court side of the mall. The DMV office is close to the Food Court of the mall.
Forty or more officers responded to the scene, including tactical teams.
You can contact Kevin Ellis at 704-201-7016 or email him at kellis@gastongazette.com.
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