Courtney Balcombe – Features Editor

clb6264@psu.edu

When it comes to active shooters, many people do not expect to see them so close to them let alone people they see every day. However, on September 18 our local Millcreek Mall experienced a small active shooter situation.

While there may not be many details about the situation, the Millcreek Police released a statement stating that “an 18-year-old Erie man beat up a teenager before getting into a fight with another person and wrestling over a gun when the weapon fired inside the Millcreek Mall.” This event happened inside the food court, one of many entrances into the mall that is not directly a store.

As someone who works inside the Millcreek Mall, I had the weekend off, however, the same cannot be said for three of my coworkers. I saw a post on Facebook that the shooting had taken place and texted one of my store managers who I knew worked that day. When she had left her shift,  she had seen police at Men’s Warehouse and did not think much of it until her mom called asking if she was okay.

Now, our store is about a five to ten-minute walk from the food court and tucked in a corner. While we were a bit away from the location, the mall had no sort of communication between the food court and the rest of the stores that something occurred. Even though the altercation never went past the food court and no one was injured or killed, my coworkers voiced concerns to our managers about how the situation was handled.

To begin, there is no training given by the Millcreek Mall about what to do in the event of an active shooter. For my store, we are told to lock our doors and get out safely. In this case, what my coworkers did after our off-the-clock manager told them what was happening. There was no communication between the mall and our store or any other stores to indicate there was a shooting let alone a shooter.

Next, if the altercation that happened in the food court had actually been an active shooter going through the mall, many people on different sides of the complex would not know what is happening in another area. If you haven’t been to our mall, the food court isn’t super close to JCPenny’s or Boscov’s, even near the entrance of Macy’s is hard to pinpoint since the store has three entrances.

I cannot speak for every store, let alone my own store. However, as someone who frequents the mall, not only as an employee but as a shopper, it makes it hard for me to want to go there knowing that this one event did not come with the safety of everyone outside of the food court. Where my store is, there are always loud noises coming from the hallway that a gunshot would probably be passed off as someone dropping something on the ground. We would not think of the sound as being a gunshot from another area in the mall until it became a regular noise or repetitive sound.

Many of my friends have resorted to ordering online from the mall’s stores because they do not want to take their children. Since no one knew about the situation and there was no communication about what was happening, why bring your child into such an unsafe environment.

The mall needs to have some sort of indication that something is happening in one area of the mall to help another area of the mall to prevent the possibilities of injuries and/or deaths.