Mayfair Mall shooting: Multiple people wounded in active shooting near Milwaukee
Mayfair Mall #MayfairMall
An “active shooting incident” erupted at a mall near Milwaukee Friday, leaving multiple people wounded, said Wauwatosa Mayor Dennis McBride.
“Multiple injured victims have and are being transported from the north end of the Macy’s department store,” McBride told CNN. “None of the victims’ injuries appear to be life threatening.”
The mayor said “the perpetrator is at-large at this time” and about 75 police officers were on scene at Mayfair Mall one week before the start of the busy holiday season.
‘It will take time to provide additional, and perhaps, more accurate information,” McBride said.
The FBI in Milwaukee tweeted that agents were “currently responding to support local law enforcement tactical response to Mayfair Mall shooting incident.”
A heavy police and EMT presence responded, according to footage from CNN affiliate WISN.
Police officers in tactical gear were seen entering the mall, and at least five people were carried on stretchers to ambulances, WISN reported.
Austin Seybold, 24, said he was locked down in the back room of the Finish Line store inside the mall. Seybold saw customers running past the store. Employees starting rounding up the people inside the store and “took them into the back and locked our front gate,” Seybold wrote to CNN via text message from the store.
Seybold said six employees and about a dozen customers were locked in the back room for about two hours before a SWAT team escorted them out.
“It was a little frantic at first, but we managed to get everyone into the back without any hassle and everyone has remained fairly calm which is good, although we can hear what sounds like SWAT teams in the back passageways of the mall and the gravity of the situation is beginning to set in,” he wrote.
Wauwatosa is about seven miles northwest of Milwaukee.
The city was the site of multiple protests in October following news that Officer Joseph Mensah, who shot and killed 17-year-old Alvin Cole outside Mayfair Mall in February, would not face criminal charges.
The decision not to charge Mensah sparked protests during a monthslong wave of nationwide demonstrations over how police treat Black people.
