UT - Five dead, 4 injured in shooting spree at SLC mall, 12 Feb 2007

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Shooting at Trolley Square
February 12th, 2007 @ 6:54pm

(KSL News) There's been a shooting at the Trolley Square mall tonight.

Multiple gun shots have been fired inside the mall and outside in the parking garage.

Officers from multiple law enforcement agencies are on the scene and continuing to arrive there.

Several witnesses heard multiple gunshots. Initial reports indicated at least six people are involved in various areas of the mall, including the Hard Rock Café, Pottery Barn Kids, and the west garage. We do not know the conditions of any of the reported victims.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=888784
 
SALT LAKE CITY - A gunman entered a mall Monday night and shot several people before he was killed, police said.

"There have been multiple victims and there are some fatalities. ... I can't confirm the number," Salt Lake City police Detective Robin Snyder said in brief remarks outside Trolley Square.

"The suspect has been killed. He is no longer a threat," Snyder said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17124042/
 
Adjusting for time zone differences, this shooting and the Philadelphia office massacre occurred at almost the same time. Bizarre, and awful. Now I won't want to go to malls for a while.
 
5 victims deceased and the shooter is deceased also. Several others injured some in critical condition.
 
It is very strange that they occured at pretty close to the same time.



misterallgood said:
Adjusting for time zone differences, this shooting and the Philadelphia office massacre occurred at almost the same time. Bizarre, and awful. Now I won't want to go to malls for a while.
 
'We've gotta go in and stop this killer'At least six dead, including gunmanThe Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake TribuneArticle Last Updated:posted: 11:05 PM- At least six people, including the gunman, are dead tonight after an shooting spree at a crowded downtown Salt Lake City mall.

Witnesses described scenes of horror from inside Trolley Square - a sprawling mall of about 30 shops and restaurants taking up an entire city block near 600 East and 600 South.

Ron Mason and DeEta Barta, of Salt Lake City, said they were eating around 7 p.m. at the Desert Edge Brew Pub when they saw a man coming in from the west parking lot. The man, wearing a dark trench coat, was carrying a long rifle or shotgun.
They yelled, "There's a man with a gun!" A few seconds later they heard about 12 rounds.

Witness interviews conducted by The Tribune indicated there were four bodies inside the card shop Cabin Fever, one in the mall hallway outside Bath and Body Works and one inside Pottery Barn Kids.

Mason and Barta, who are registered nurses, went to assist a victim, a younger man who had suffered a superficial gunshot wound to the right temple and ear. Though the boy was clearly in shock, the couple said, he told them that he saw his father go down.

A woman on the lower level of the mall, near Black Chandelier clothing store, said she heard a shot and looked up upstairs and saw the gunman. He had a long dark coat, dark brown hair and was carrying a rifle or shotgun, she said.
Clifton Black, 26, and Melinda Gurr, 21, of Salt Lake City, heard the shots as they hunkered down in the back of the Black Chandelier. A clerk turned off the lights of the store and locked the front doors. The clerk, Black and Gurr then hid until the gunfire stopped.

The group then ventured to the front window, where they caught the eye of a sheriff's deputy who was carrying a shotgun.
The officer shouted, "Two civilians," and told them to walk to the exits with their hands over their heads, Black said.

On their way out of the mall, they saw a "heap of bodies" in one of the stores, Black said. The injured people were being treated by paramedics, he said. They saw at least one other man on the ground while leaving the mall, he said.

Shaura Cole was in the center of the mall area and saw a teenage boy in a white shirt and dark pants, lying on the floor with a gunshot wound to his head. She said he was about 16.

The police and paramedics kept running up to him and looking down at him. It was clear they knew he was dead, Cole said. A girl with a pink shirt ran to the boy, crying, fell to her knees and started shaking him. She was taken away by police a short time later.

Brad Merrill was outside the Ol' Spaghetti Factory on the mezzanine when he heard a loud noise and the sound of glass breaking.
"All of a sudden, someone barged into the mall with a big shotgun," Merrill said. He was holding it in one hand, barrel up.
Merrill grabbed his young son and ran outside the mall, becoming separated from his wife and three other children.
He head as many as two-dozen shots were fired, and he called 911 on his cell phone. He then called his wife and learned they were hiding inside a storage room inside the Sharper Image. They got out about 7:50 p.m.

Marie Smith, an employee at Bath and Body Works, said she saw the gunman running in front of her store with what appeared to be a rifle. She ducked behind the counter and saw him shoot a woman in her mid-20s.
"She screamed as she was coming around the corner and he shot her. I didn't hear him say anything to her at all."

John and George Donham, who live in an apartment south of Trolley Square, were walking through the east parking lot of the mall when they heard gunshots.
They saw several women running out of building, then saw a man sitting in the passenger side of a dark Chrysler, bleeding from a head wound.
John Donham said one side of the man's head looked like "meatloaf," he appeared to be in shock.
The victim said: "That guy's in there just shooting."
He told the Donhams that he had been shot while he was on the second floor main lobby on the north side of the mall. The Donhams, who took cover behind a car, said they heard at least five more shots before officers arrived.
The men said they saw five or six officers run toward the mall with guns drawn. They said they tried to call the officers' attention to the shooting victim in the car, but the officers said, "We've gotta go in and stop this killer," the Donhams said. The officers ran in and then the Donhams heard multiple gunshots.
The victim said, "Please get me to a hospital. Please get me to a hospital," said George Donham.
John Donham said he got down on his knees beside the victim - whom they described as Caucasian, about 22 years old - and began to pray.

Barrett Dodds, another witness, was working at the Brass Key and exited the store after hearing several shots. He said he ran into a man who identified himself as an Ogden City police officer.

It was difficult to tell where the shots were coming from, Dodds said, but he directed the officer to the lower level where he believed the shooter was.
Dodds said he got a good look at the gunman and watched as he reloaded several times and shot.

"I was trying to find something to throw at him [the gunman]," he said.
Sgt. Blaine Clifford of the Ogden Police Department confirmed that one of the city's patrol division officers was involved in the shooting.
The off-duty officer happened to be in the mall at the time, Clifford said. He declined to name the officer or disclose the extent of his involvement in the shooting.


More at link: http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5215006
 
misterallgood said:
Adjusting for time zone differences, this shooting and the Philadelphia office massacre occurred at almost the same time. Bizarre, and awful. Now I won't want to go to malls for a while.
I agree. Not even malls are safe now. :(
 
Identity of some victims revealed
By Matthew D. LaPlante, Russ Rizzo and Michael N. Westley
The Salt Lake Tribune


Article Last Updated: 02/13/2007 11:35:34 AM MST
Posted: 11:24 AM- The expression on his face never changed. Not as he walked into the crowded mall. Not as he began to fire.
"He wasn't yelling or saying anything. He was just loading his gun and blasting away," said Trolley Square mall employee Jaron Dansie, who was among scores to witness the worst mass killing in Utah in recent memory.
All told, the killer slaughtered five people Tuesday evening and seriously injured at least four others.

The Tribune has learned one of the fatal victims was 52-year-old Jeff Walker. His son, 16-year-old Bingham High School junior Alan "A.J."

More at link: http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5218341
 
The 18-year-old man who shot and killed at least five people Monday night at Trolley Square has been identified as Solejman Talovic, a Bosnian refugee who lived in Salt Lake City.
Little additional information was released about Talovic.
The Bosnian community, which numbers about 3,000 in Utah, planned a press conference later this afternoon.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5218570
 
Thank you for updating this Shadow.

Shadow205 said:
The 18-year-old man who shot and killed at least five people Monday night at Trolley Square has been identified as Solejman Talovic, a Bosnian refugee who lived in Salt Lake City.

Little additional information was released about Talovic.
The Bosnian community, which numbers about 3,000 in Utah, planned a press conference later this afternoon.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5218570
 
Wow. Five killed, 2 critical, 2 serious, 2 others in hospital. The assassin was only 18.
 
Sad. Why do people feel the need to take the lives of innocent people??? Geez, these people were just going about their own business, doing some shopping, and some idiot decides he's going to bring other people into his own hell. Senseless.
 
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- An off-duty police officer being credited with helping stop a deadly shooting rampage at a shopping mall said his experience helped him react quickly to confront the gunman.

Kenneth K. Hammond, who was at the mall for an early Valentine's Day dinner with his wife, said he first thought the sound of gunfire was construction noise but drew his gun and told his wife to call 911 when he realized what was happening.

"I've been in situations before where I've had to chase a guy who was pointing a gun at me," Hammond, 33, said Tuesday from the Ogden police headquarters where he works.

Investigators were still trying to figure out why Sulejmen Talovic, an 18-year-old Bosnian immigrant, opened fire Monday on shoppers, killing five and injuring four others.

Hammond, who fired on Talovic, is being credited with drawing the gunman's attention until other officers could reach the scene. Talovic was killed, although it was unclear which officer fired the fatal shot, police said.

"I feel like I was there and did what I had to do," Hammond said.

more at the link http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UTAH_SHOOTING?SITE=UTSAC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
 
Thank God for Kenneth K. Hammond, or this could have been so much worse....
 
well, i have to say, NOTHING excuses what the guy did. however... i can understand much better someone snapping who was a war refugee, having grown up in bosnia, knowing nothing but violence & chaos all his life... that makes much more sense than some suburban brat who has never wanted for a thing in his life, or some assh*le who was mad because some girl he liked didn't want to go out with him, or his boss fires him,, you know, the usual reasons. doesn't make this any less tragic or horrifying though.
this is just another after-effect of what war does to people. it appears that he probably had severe post-traumatic stress and i imagine also extreme culture shock on top of that. too bad he was not able to helped before he lost it.
 
reb said:
well, i have to say, NOTHING excuses what the guy did. however... i can understand much better someone snapping who was a war refugee, having grown up in bosnia, knowing nothing but violence & chaos all his life... that makes much more sense than some suburban brat who has never wanted for a thing in his life, or some assh*le who was mad because some girl he liked didn't want to go out with him, or his boss fires him,, you know, the usual reasons. doesn't make this any less tragic or horrifying though.
this is just another after-effect of what war does to people. it appears that he probably had severe post-traumatic stress and i imagine also extreme culture shock on top of that. too bad he was not able to helped before he lost it.

I don't know, reb. It seems to me that he was more rebelling against civility. The mall and regular people who visit the malls and shopping centers. It is a far reach for me to believe that it was anything but a misplaced ideology sort of like most terrorists. He was a suicide mall shooter not any different than a suicide bomb deliverer. JMO.

People who kill innocents in their everyday activities are looking for attention and the attention is all about them and their ideals forced fed by their actions. I lose sympathy for the actions and the sympathy for them when those two issues collide.
 
well, you may be right.. and i'm just assuming here.. so i could be totally wrong.
 
Seems weird that the press is not mentioning that he was a Muslim. Just saying...
 
I just found that out as well... war sucks, no matter what side you're on, especially if you're young and you grow up in it... but... my sympathy meter just went from zero (but with possible explanation) to -100. i dunno.. it's hard to say, if he snapped, or if he was just doing all knew and saw his fellow 'freedom fighters' do.
ha... 'give us your poor, your weary,'.. etc.. so they can come live here, wreak havoc and then shoot us!? is that how it goes now....??

now isn't that interesting, the media doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, or enrage the muslim population.. geez, they might go on a shooting rampage or behead some people in exchange for insulting islam! the good ol' religion of peace (or, is that, pieces?)

nothing like living in a country where we all have to walk on eggshells every day and keep our mouths taped shut.

speaking of that, i better shut mine til we know more about this story. guess i have a lot of mixed feelings about this one.. it's just sad on so many levels.
 
here's a good one, from the salt lake tribune:

<Bosnian immigrants also are facing a backlash over the fact that the shooter was Bosnian and Muslim.
Buba Roth, head of the Utah Consortium of Multicultural Groups, said Bosnians are being harassed by co-workers asking questions such as "Who let you in?" and "Will you kill us?">

since when is trying to protect your own life, which humans should have the right to do, in the face of a religion that is well known for bombing and massacring large numbers of innocent people.... considered 'harrasment'...?? so reasonable self-preservation, and expressing reasonable fear, caution and doubt, is now called harrassment?
 

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