Washington Governor Jay Inslee condemned the tragedy on Twitter.
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The shooting occurred Friday evening at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington, about 65 miles north of Seattle.
People from Oak Harbor began posting video and pictures of his arrest in near-real time.
After the shooting, police and rescue workers worked their way through the mall, clearing stores and evacuating shoppers, some of whom locked themselves in dressing rooms.
Cetin was unarmed and was carrying a satchel with a computer in it.
Following reports that he’d been apprehended, Sgt. Francis also identified Cetin as the suspect in the Cascade Mall shooting by posting an undated Department of Licensing photo of Cetin to Twitter.
Washington State Patrol said at a 2:30am ET press conference that four female victims were killed inside the Macy’s at Cascade Mall.
Cetin’s motive is still unknown, though officials have said they do not think the massacre was related to terrorism, NBC News reported.
“He was kind of zombie-like”, Island County Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Hawley said.
Her sister, Evangelina Lara, told The Seattle Times the teenager had been pronounced dead by police at 2am on Saturday.
Burlington Mayor Steve Sexton’s voice trembled as he noted that the randomness of gun violence in America – which causes an estimated 30,000 deaths a year – had hit his small town.
A man who called himself Armando, who works at the mall, was getting a coffee and heading to Macy’s to use the restroom when the shooting happened.
A motive for the shooting was not immediately clear, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation said terrorism was not suspected.
Shoppers who spoke to local media outlets told similar stories of a chaotic scene that followed gunshots in a mall that includes a 14-screen AMC movie theatre, Chuck E. Cheese’s and the Children’s Museum of Skagit County.
The Seattle Times reports (http://bit.ly/2cWhxJY ) that Skagit County court records show three such charges for 20-year-old Arcan Cetin in both Burlington, Washington, and Island County, with the victim identified as Cetin’s stepfather.
Oscar Garcia, a resident of Mount Vernon, said the youngest victim was a girl who was in the make-up department of Macy’s with her mother when the gunman approached.
Authorities collected evidence from the mall overnight Friday and all day Saturday as the bodies were removed from the premise.
“He was trying to go to the mall and people were screaming”, she said.
Anxious residents fear for their safety as authorities search for a gunman who killed five people at a mall in Washington state.
Residents of the town of about 8,600 turned to each other for comfort at a community gathering in a city park.
Surveillance video images released by authorities showed that Cetin, whom police originally described as Hispanic and in his late teens or early 20s, went into the mall without the rifle that he shortly after brandished in the department store. She said “it’s nerve-wracking” and she’s nervous about taking her 7-year-old daughter to her soccer game. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life”, she said Saturday, trying to hold back tears as she attended the community vigil.
More than 200 officers from more than two dozen agencies responded to the mall following the shooting Friday evening.
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The coroner’s office is in the process of identifying the victims and notifying their families before the names are released publicly.
