A teenager was shot outside the Columbia Mall in Columbia, Mo. late on Thanksgiving night. The Missouri mall shooting took place Thursday when a 19-year old man was reportedly hit with a bullet as another man was putting his gun inside its holster, reports Kansas City news station KSHB.
“There’s no danger to any shoppers or anything at any point during this situation,” Sgt. Clint Sinclair of the Columbia Police Department said, according to KSHB.
No arrests were made. “We have everybody we need to talk to,” said Sinclair. “Nobody was in any sort of danger.”
The victim was taken to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. According to the local ABC affiliate, the mall shooting took place in a car in the parking lot, and the two men involved knew each other.
The Columbia Mall shooting may be the first violent outburst of the 2017 holiday shopping season. Later that night, police responded to a disturbance at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Ala. where shoppers were fighting over bargains, reports AL.com. The brawl shut down Alabama’s largest mall 40 minutes early, the outlet reports.
On Black Friday, another incident at Houston’s Willowbrook Mall resulted in the shooting of one man and the stabbing of another. Both were airlifted to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries.