Inside The Mall: Witness Accounts Of The Orland Park Shooting

ORLAND PARK, IL – For many, the third Monday night of January is the end of the first three-day weekend of the year. Usually a relaxed time following a day of celebration in remembrance of the great Martin Luther King, Jr. But for hundreds of shoppers at the Orland Square Mall in Orland Park this year, the night this year turned into a nightmare scenario many of us fear and hope to never be a part of.

Around 6:45 p.m., a gunman opened fire inside the crowded mall. He killed one person and wounded another with multiple shots. The act sent everyone either fleeing for the exits or locked inside stores as a total mall evacuation was ordered.

More Coverage On Patch:

• 1 Dead, Bystander Wounded In Orland Square Mall Shooting
• Orland Square Mall Shooting Suspect In Custody
• Suspect In Orland Square Mall Shooting Identified, Manhunt Continues

Here's a look back at what witnesses to the horrific event remember from a night they'd like to forget but likely never will.

Susana, a shopper inside the Forever 21 store when the shots were heard, said everyone she saw around her was n shock.

"We all ran to the back of the store," she said. "The sales associate did a good job and told everyone to go to the back and exit safely. There were many teens and mothers with babies having to leave their strollers behind. Everyone in the Apple Store and Forever 21 was able to leave safely."

That's just one example of mall employees, and certainly law enforcement who arrived almost immediately, jumping into action to ensure everyone's safety.

"Police handled it very swiftly," said one store employee who was on her way out of the mall when the shots were fired. Instead of bolting for the exits, this woman darted back inside the store she works at the make sure everyone there could be escorted out safely.

The same employee described the scene just after the shots had been fired.

"We all heard girls crying, kids crying," she said. "It was horrifying."

A man shopping near the Apple Store with his fiance remembers leaving through the exits near JCPenney and having been offered a ride by a man in a car that drove up since their vehicle was on the complete opposite side of the mall.

A woman who was also near JCPenney remembers seeing "a man in a hoodie" near the people who were shot before she too left toward the parking lot.

"I just saw everyone running toward their cars," she said.

A man in the same general area at the time says he is a sound professional who produces radio shows for a living. He says is was "exactly" four shots that rang out and even remembers the exact pattern of the shots.

One terrified woman emailed Patch from the back of a store. She was there with eight women after the shooter had left the area, but no one in the back of the store knew whether there was still an active shooter in the mall.

Syreeta Plummer El, a Country Club Hills resident, was in the mall parking lot just before 6:30 p.m. when she planned to make her way over to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. As she was talking on the phone just outside the building, she heard a series of gunshots.

"I knew it was gunshots, so I just started running back to my car and left," Plummer El said. "I don't know what happened there after that, but when I got to the Shell gas station I saw all the police cars and ambulances coming."

Even as a military veteran, Plummer El says it was "scary" to hear the shots at a time and place like Orland Square Mall in the middle of winter.

Photo courtesy of Northern Illinois Fireground Photos