Cascade Mall is still considered an active scene. Police said Cetrin entered the mall and opened fire roughly 10 minutes later in the makeup department of Macy’s department store, police said.
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Multiple tips and video footage of the suspect’s vehicle outside the mall led police to Arcan Cetin, who was was arrested near his home in Oak Harbor, Wash., 28 miles southwest of the crime scene.
US authorities have arrested a suspect who masterminded the shooting at a shopping mall in Washington, which led to the death of five persons.
Police had initially described the suspect as a Hispanic man in his late teens or early 20s. The weapon was recovered at the scene.
A video image shows a suspect wanted by the authorities regarding the shooting.
Cetin is believed to have entered the Cascade Mall in Burlington, around 65 miles (105 km) north of Seattle, where he began shoooting indiscriminately at about 7 p.m. local time on Friday in Macy’s department store, the local police told the agency.
The Cascade Mall is an enclosed shopping mall that opened in 1990.
While more details emerged on the suspect after his arrest Saturday night, the motive remains unknown. Four people were dead, and the shooter was gone, last seen walking toward Interstate 5. The youngest female victim was a teenager, law enforcement officials said Saturday morning.
The bodies were removed from the mall Saturday and are in the possession of the Skagit County Coroner’s Office.
Earlier Saturday as police scrambled to find the shooter, the small city about 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of Seattle waited and anxious.
Four women were killed in the rampage.
Officials said Cetin is a legal permanent resident, but not a United States citizen.
She said he could see police at the doors with assault rifles and said they were no longer guarding the doors as of 9:30 p.m. Cetin was carrying a satchel with a computer inside and was in a “zombielike” state when he was taken into custody, the lieutenant said.
Island County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Mike Hawley, who was one of the first law enforcement officials to make contact with Cetin, said at a Saturday night news conference that when approached by law enforcement Cetin was unarmed, did not speak and appeared “zombie-like”.
Cetin is scheduled to make a court appearance Monday.
The community of 8,600 people is too far from Seattle to be a commuter town, but its population swells to 55,000 during the day because of a popular outlet mall and other stores and businesses. She said “it’s nerve-wracking” and she’s nervous about taking her 7-year-old daughter to her soccer game. “It came to our little community”, Sexton said.
“Probably one of the most hard moments last night was knowing that we had family of the victims out there wondering about their loved ones”, said Cammock, who commands the SMART Team. The identity of the man who was fatally shot was also withheld and may not be released until tomorrow.
The attack was the seventh time this year in which at least four people were killed in a shooting in Washington, according to The Seattle Times.
“He did that to girls of all grades at the high school including my best friend and I, regardless of the blatant disgust from the girls and being told to stop”, she said.
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Evangelina Lara told the paper that she was shopping at the Cascade Mall with Sarai and her younger sister, but they split up; Sarai went to Macy’s looking for trousers. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
