JAMESTOWN – A shopping trip at the Tanger Outlets shopping center in Glendale, Arizona, turned into a scary situation after a Jamestown man and his wife heard gunshots from inside a shoe store.
“I just thank god that we are all safe and we all made it out OK out of the mall,” Joel Nohrenberg said.
Nohrenberg and his wife, Kim, were inside a shoe store at the Tanger Outlets shopping center when two groups got into an argument and fired gunshots at each other March 23 outside in the parking lot. A 4-year-old boy and three others were injured in the shooting that happened at about 2:40 p.m.
He said he did not witness what happened but alerted others after he heard seven to eight gunshots.
“The only thing I saw was people running and scattering outside the shoe store as soon as I heard it,” he said.
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He said the store manager told everyone inside the business to go into a store room in the back. He said the manager locked the front doors and they took shelter in the storage room for little more than an hour. An emergency exit was located close by in case something happened.
It took about two to three minutes after the gunshots when law enforcement arrived, Nohrenberg said.
“While we were in the store room, I kept a watch out, myself and the store manager, we were looking out the window of the store room toward the front of the store and all we could see was law enforcement and first responders out there walking back and forth in front of the shoe store,” he said. “It was just making sure that we were safe in the back room there.”
Law enforcement evacuated one store at a time and eventually led the Nohrenbergs and store workers out to a parking lot where there were at least 1,000 people, he said. They waited in the parking lot for about another 45 minutes before they were allowed to leave.
Nohrenberg didn’t see the people involved in the altercation or any of the victims.
“There was just caution tape all over and were were directed to go a certain way out of the mall,” he said. “Law enforcement was everywhere. A lot of helicopters and a lot of first responders were there.”
