Man kills self after opening fire in mall
Print Edition
A 20-year-old man fired multiple shots inside New Jersey’s largest shopping mall, trapping customers and employees for hours as police scoured stores for the gunman, who was found dead early yesterday of a self-inflicted wound, authorities said. There were no other injuries.
Investigators don’t believe the gunman, identified as Richard Shoop, intended to shoot anyone when he began firing at the ceiling and elsewhere at the Garden State Plaza on Monday night shortly before the mall’s closing time, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said.
“We think he went in with the intent that he was not going to come out alive,” Molinelli said.
He said Shoop was known to authorities and had had a problem with drugs, but he did not elaborate.
The prosecutor said Shoop left an ambiguous note with his family. While Molinelli would not call it a suicide note, he said it did “express that an end is coming. It could have been prison. ... It could have been what he did last night. It gave his family reason to reach out to us.”
Shoop’s body was discovered around in a back corridor of the mall, deep within a lower level, in an area that is not accessible to the public, Paramus police Chief Kenneth Ehrenberg said. Shoop did not work at the mall, he said, and police are still trying to determine why he went there.
Chaos erupted shortly before the mall’s 9:30pm closing time when authorities said a man dressed in black and wearing a motorcycle helmet fired six shots. Molinelli said the weapon, which was modified to look like an AK-47, belonged to Shoop’s brother, who owned it legally and did not give his brother permission to take it.
Witnesses said the sound of gunfire sent customers and employees rushing hysterically for the exits and hiding places at the mall.
Jessica Stigliano, 21, who’d been in the food court, said yesterday that she had thought, “Not many people run for their life, but that’s what I’m doing right now.”
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