(WASHINGTON) — Two Wisconsin residents have died following a lightning strike near the White House on Thursday night, police confirmed to ABC News Friday.
Police said 76-year-old James Mueller and 75-year-old Donna Meuller, both from Janesville, Wisconsin, died after being injured in the strike in Lafayette Park in front of the White House.
Thursday night, D.C. Fire and EMS said it had responded and was treating four patients that were found in “the vicinity of a tree.”
It said the two men and two women were transported to area hospitals with “life-threatening injuries.”
Officials said it’s still unclear what the adults were doing prior to the lightning strike, if they knew each other and why they were in the park.
Uniformed U.S. Park Police officers and members of the Secret Service were also on the scene and immediately rendered aid to the victims, an EMS official said during a news conference.
The National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the area Thursday evening.
ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Tuesday night’s lopsided result in the Kansas abortion referendum — which saw the anti-abortion measure defeated some 59-41 in a traditionally red state — has Democrats and Republicans wondering if the post-Roe fight over the social issue marks a sea change in the midterm landscape or a less dramatic shift in an environment that still favors the GOP.
The proposed amendment, which gave voters a direct choice over whether or not to strip the state constitution’s abortion protections, marked the first tangible answer to the question of how June’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade will influence the electorate.
Turnout in the summertime primary spiked to nearly the same level of the 2018 midterm general election. And with an approximately 18-point win for abortion access advocates in one of the nation’s conservative bastions, debate is underway among many over whether that victory could ripple outward.
Democrats who spoke with ABC News insist they have a new lease on life after being pummeled by President Joe Biden’s low approval rating, historic inflation, high gas prices, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and more.
Republicans, meanwhile, insist the wind is still at their backs — though even some GOP operatives acknowledge the Kansas results indicate that their gains could be curtailed as the party largely embraces a strict anti-abortion agenda.
“If I were a Republican House or Senate candidate or a Republican strategist, I would be panicking right now,” said Democratic strategist Jon Reinish. “Voters are furious, and voters are mobilized. Looking at [Tuesday’s] extremely definitive results, I think that this scrambles a lot of conventional wisdom and calculations on the whole midterm landscape this November.”
Had the amendment passed, it would have offered the GOP-controlled state legislature a path to restricting or banning abortion, continuing a pattern seen in other conservative areas of the country. Kansas law currently allows most abortions to take place up to 22 weeks in a pregnancy.
However, Tuesday night’s results marked a comprehensive win for abortion rights supporters in a state former President Donald Trump won by nearly 15 points just two years ago and where registered Republicans outpace registered Democrats by hundreds of thousands.
In a sign of intense enthusiasm on the issue, the vote against the amendment significantly outran President Joe Biden’s showing in Kansas in 2020.
Abortion access supporters won in Shawnee County, home of Topeka, by a 66-34 margin Tuesday. Biden won the county by only 3 points in 2020.
The same trend followed in Kansas’ rural expanses. In Hamilton County, for example, abortion opponents only defeated the amendment by about 12 points, whereas Trump beat Biden in the county in 2020 by 65 points.
Democratic operatives cited that as persuasive evidence of an argument they’ve made since before Roe’s demise: Abortion has the power to supercharge turnout in a midterm cycle that was previously expected to be characterized by a depressed Democratic base, given Biden’s unpopularity and economic headwinds.
“When voters know that abortion is on the ballot, they show up and they send a resounding message,” said Democratic pollster Molly Murphy. “Republicans are on the wrong side of that message, and as voters learn what Republicans’ priorities are if they take power, it is incredibly encouraging to see the way voters will respond.”
“Voters understand the difference between the parties on abortion, and they are increasingly seeing Republicans take steps to ban it,” Murphy said, “which can help create a real choice between the two parties.”
Leading Democrats seized on the results Wednesday.
“The voters of Kansas sent a powerful signal that this fall the American people will vote to preserve and protect the rights and refuse to let them be ripped away by politicians,” Biden said in remarks before his interagency task force meeting on reproductive health care.
“The people of Kansas spoke yesterday, and they spoke loud and clear. They said this is not a partisan issue,” Vice President Kamala Harris added in her own remarks. “The women of America should not be the subject of partisan debate or perspective.”
It’s still unclear, though, how much voter enthusiasm on that one issue will translate to Democratic support.
Biden’s approval ratings have been stuck in the 30s, weakened in part by dissatisfaction among his base that key campaign promises are mired in the narrowly divided Congress, stymied by legal and administrative uncertainty or blocked by the courts.
ABC News polls and other surveys have also shown that economic issues remain top of mind for voters in a cycle that won’t feature many more single-issue referendums like the one in Kansas.
On top of those dynamics, some Republican strategists and pollsters cautioned against extrapolating the results of a unique abortion referendum onto the more typical midterm races this fall.
“A difficult-to-pass constitutional amendment ballot issue in a state does not erase two years of mismanagement, higher costs and incredible dysfunction in Washington,” said GOP pollster Robert Blizzard. “For those on the left and in the media breathlessly trying to change the political headwinds facing the Democratic Party, they should be reminded the midterm elections will not be an up-or-down [vote] on codifying abortion but instead a referendum on Biden, the economy and dysfunction in D.C.”
On top of that, the timing of Tuesday’s referendum could offer advice to Republicans running this November on how to message on abortion to avoid the significant backlash seen in Kansas.
Democrats have been pouncing on some states’ efforts to outright ban abortion, even in instances of rape and incest — proposals some Republicans said should be avoided.
“This result does not mean pro-choice candidates are going to win in a rout this November. Other issues are still far more important, and candidates are a bundle of issues. The key for Republican candidates is to back away from a total ban and get in line with public opinion, including conservative opinion, that favors time limits and exceptions for the mother’s health,” said one GOP strategist.
Still, Republicans conceded they may have to temper their expectations for the fall.
Last year’s election results in Virginia, where now-Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin won by 2 points in a state Biden took by 10 points in 2020, had the GOP boasting that even congressional districts Biden won by 10 points were no longer safe.
But with such a potent and prominent issue giving Democrats late momentum, operatives now say Republicans’ target lists may face a crunch even as their chances of flipping the House remain strong.
“There’s no doubt overturning Roe has given Democrats some momentum,” said one GOP strategist working on midterm races. “It seems the front-line races this fall won’t be as far down as a lot of folks had hoped. I think realistically we’re back to where D+5 districts are the front-line battles this fall.”
(LAUREL, Neb.) — Foul play is suspected after four people were found dead at multiple homes in a small Nebraska town Thursday morning following reports of an explosion and fires, authorities said.
A suspect is in custody, Nebraska State Patrol announced Friday morning. More details on the suspect and arrest are forthcoming.
Nebraska State Patrol Superintendent Col. John Bolduc said during a press briefing Thursday afternoon that state and local authorities were “investigating multiple crime scenes” in Laurel, in northeastern Nebraska.
Authorities first responded to a home shortly after 3 a.m. after a 911 caller reported an explosion at the residence, Bolduc said. There was a fire at the home, he said.
Once inside, responding officers and deputies found one person dead, he said.
While at the first home, a fire was reported at a second home three blocks away, Bolduc said. Three people were found dead inside that home, he said.
Bolduc said foul play is suspected in the four deaths, and that responders at the second home worked to preserve any evidence while putting out the fire.
A Nebraska State Patrol statement after the fires were suppressed said “gunfire is suspected to have played a part” in both homes.
Authorities were searching for a silver sedan in connection with the investigation, Bolduc said Thursday. The car was initially reported leaving Laurel shortly after the second fire was reported, and the male driver may have picked up a passenger before leaving the town, he said. The later Nebraska State Patrol statement indicated the car may have left the town later than initially reported.
Fire investigators believe accelerants may have been used in both fires at the homes, said Bolduc, noting that the suspect or suspects may have burn injuries.
Authorities are working with local residents and businesses to obtain any relevant security camera footage as part of their investigation.
The identities of the victims will be released pending family notification, and a cause of death will be determined following an autopsy, Bolduc said.
It is too early in the investigation to determine any connection between the victims, or if this can be characterized as a domestic incident, Bolduc said.
Cedar County Sheriff Larry Koranda said Thursday the community of 1,000 is shaken by what happened.
“Everybody knows everybody in this small community,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. hiring saw a dramatic increase in July, as the economy added 528,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.
The report defied expectations of a hiring slowdown as the Federal Reserve carries out a fight against inflation that aims to slash demand by cooling the economy but risks tipping the country into a recession.
Evidence of a softening labor market had mounted this week amid layoffs at high-profile companies like Walmart and Robinhood, as well as a government report that showed a steep decline in job openings in June.
The 528,000 jobs added in July marks a significant uptick from 372,000 jobs added in June. Moreover, the figures signals an improvement from the already-robust hiring sustained over the first half of 2022, during which the economy added an average of 461,000 jobs each month.
The overall robust hiring in recent months defies typical conditions for a recession, Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at the career site Glassdoor, told ABC News prior to the data release.
“It would be very unusual to have a recession when we’re still adding several hundred thousand jobs a month,” he said.
While a faster pace of hiring may cheer some economists and everyday Americans, the signal of strengthening labor demand may put more pressure on the Fed to sustain its aggressive interest rate hikes. At meetings in each of the past two months, the central bank has increased its benchmark interest rate 0.75% — dramatic hikes last matched in 1994.
Despite a series of borrowing cost increases meant to slash prices, inflation has not only persisted but worsened. Data released last month showed that prices jumped a staggering 9.1% in June, which amounts to the highest inflation rate in more than four decades.
Alarmingly, the price increases have coincided with shrinking economic output. Gross domestic product dropped at an annualized rate of 0.9% in the second quarter after falling 1.6% in the previous quarter.
The recent trend qualifies for the shorthand definition of a recession consisting of two consecutive quarters of GDP decline. But the formal designation of a recession depends on a wider range of metrics weighed by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
So far this year, the tight labor market has offered up a strong corner of the economy. But employment data indicated softening on Tuesday, when a report released by the government showed that job openings fell steeply in June to their lowest level in nine months. The 10.7 million job vacancies reported in June, however, remains an elevated figure.
Meanwhile, a slew of major companies in recent days have announced job cuts or hiring slowdowns. Walmart laid off nearly 200 corporate employees on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. A day before, Robinhood announced plans to cut 23% of its staff. Tech giants Apple, Amazon and Google-parent company Alphabet have recently announced they will slow hiring.
(NEW YORK) — ABC News can report that Kari Lake, a former longtime news anchor in Phoenix who left her career in media last year and received former President Donald Trump’s backing, is projected to win the Republican primary in Arizona’s race for governor, after suggesting foul play in an election she already claimed victory in.
“Though the results took longer than they should have, Arizonans who have been forgotten by the establishment just delivered a political earthquake,” Lake said in a statement after her win was officially projected. “This is more than an election — it is a beautiful movement by so many people across our beautiful state to finally put Arizona First.”
Lake defeats Karrin Taylor Robson, a wealthy real estate developer and former member of the Arizona Board of Regents, who was backed by Trump’s, now estranged, Vice President Mike Pence and Arizona’s current term-limited Gov. Doug Ducey. Trump and Pence traveled to Arizona on the same day last month to stump for the competing candidates, with Pence warning against “those who want to make this election about the past.”
Taylor Robson spent more than $15 million of her own money on the race, but it was Lake’s “ultra-MAGA” and “America First” stance, coupled with her repetition of Trump’s “Big Lie,” that ultimately prevailed, after a campaign season filled with attack ads from all angles, which Democratic nominee for governor Katie Hobbs described as a “primary race to the bottom.”
Hobbs released a statement following the projection calling Lake “dangerous for Arizona” and calling the November general election “a choice between sanity and chaos.”
“Throughout her campaign, Lake has counted Nazi sympathizers and far-right extremists as part of her coalition,” she said. “We know where she stands on the issues that matter most, vowing to ban abortion and reproductive health care, putting cameras in our children’s classrooms, and wasting taxpayer money relitigating the 2020 election and manipulating future elections if she doesn’t like the results.”
Despite a handful of hypocrisy scandals, with Pence swiping her as a “convert” to the GOP who donated to Barack Obama, Lake acknowledged her past support for Democratic causes on the campaign trail, but now takes a far-right stance on social issues. She opposes abortion and transgender rights and made election integrity and border security top campaign issues, saying she would declare an invasion at the southern border on day one as governor.
Entering the general election season, Lake has already said that she would not change her tone but continue to talk about the widely disproven conspiracy that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, even as some Republicans are concerned that if Trump’s candidates don’t moderate their message for the general electorate, it will be harder to win in Arizona in November.
Arizona Republican strategist Barrett Marson, who supported Taylor Robson, told ABC News, “It’ll be up to them [the Trump candidates] to moderate, or to at least start to appeal to the broader audience. I just don’t get telling your voters that there’s fraud in the election that you won and then expect them to continue to come out and vote for you.”
Lake dismissed questions Wednesday on how she could declare victory in an election that she doesn’t have any confidence in and why voters should trust that she won this election fair and square, claiming to have evidence of irregularities but refusing to provide evidence of wrongdoing to the press.
“We’re going with the votes, and we’re going with what the people who really understand what’s happening [in this] this election now,” she said.
A first-time candidate for public office who has said she would not have fulfilled her legal duty to certify it in 2020, Lake said, if elected governor, she would sign legislation to eliminate electronic counting machines and move to “one-day voting” in the state where voting by mail is a popular method. On the night of her election-watch party in Scottsdale, she wielded a wooden sledgehammer she said was intended for electronic voting machines and Hobbs.
With Lake’s win official, Trump sees a slate of winning candidates in Arizona, his most primary wins in any state — and in one that helped deliver the presidency to Joe Biden.
“President Trump went 14-0 in Arizona as the MAGA wave continues to sweep across the nation. America is a nation in decline under Democrat leadership, but President Trump will not stop until America is made great once more through the election of America First fighters,” Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement Wednesday to ABC News.
One strategist told ABC News the wins prove that Arizona, though it has taken on a purple hue in recent years, is “still very much Trump country.”
Taylor Robson told Good Morning America and World News Tonight weekend co-anchor Whit Johnson that Lake priming her supporters for a stolen election — before Lake ultimately won the election herself — should “disqualify” her from the race, as many voters in Arizona are already mistrusting in the election process.
In a statement late Thursday, Taylor Robson said she accepted the results of the election and congratulated Lake on the win.
“This part of my life’s journey has come to an end. Now I need to be with my family and get back to my business,” she said.
“The voters of Arizona have spoken, I accept the results, I trust the process and the people who administer it,” she continued. “I have spent my life supporting Republican candidates and causes and it is my hope that our Republican nominees are successful in November.”
While Trump’s endorsed candidates are dominating the Arizona primary races, it was unclear if the MAGA agenda would show the same success in November.
(SAN ANTONIO) — Eight years before Uvalde school Police Chief Pete Arredondo led the controversial law enforcement response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, he was demoted from a high-ranking position at the Webb County Sheriff’s Office, according to reporting by a local news outlet Thursday.
Arredondo “couldn’t get along with people,” Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar told the San Antonio Express-News, according to the report. Cuellar also said that he demoted Arredondo from assistant chief to commander in 2014.
“He just didn’t fit the qualifications or the work that I set out for him,” Cuellar said, according to the report.
Arredondo has come under immense scrutiny for his role in the police response to the May 24 massacre, which claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers. Police waited 77 minutes after arriving at the school to breach the door to the classroom containing the 18-year-old gunman.
A special committee in the Texas legislature issued a report last month that found Arredondo had “failed to perform or to transfer to another person the role of incident commander.”
Arredondo previously told the Texas Tribune that he did not consider himself the on-scene commander during the shooting.
According to documents first reported by the San Antonio Express-News and obtained by ABC News, Arredondo, while working for Webb County, was “reassigned from Assistant Chief to Commander” in October 2014, and that two days earlier, a Webb County employee had written “demotion” on his payroll worksheet.
Arredondo left the Webb County Sheriff’s Office in 2017 and took a role in Laredo as a school district police captain, where he stayed for three years. When he applied for the position in Laredo, Arredondo highlighted his role in a hostage negotiation during his time in Webb County.
Cuellar, the Webb County sheriff who demoted Arredondo in 2014, told the San Antonio Express-News that Arredondo “exaggerated a little bit” his role in the hostage negotiations he mentioned in his application to Laredo.
“It wasn’t him completely. I think he exaggerated a little bit,” Cuellar was quoted telling the newspaper, adding that it was a team effort.
Arredondo was announced as the new police chief of the Uvalde Independent School District in February 2020.
Neither Arredondo or Cuellar, or officials with the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, immediately responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.
(NEW YORK) — Wall Street will be closely watching the new U.S. employment data on Friday, the latest sign of whether the U.S. economy is entering a recession as the Federal Reserve carries out a fight against inflation that aims to slash demand by slowing the economy.
Resilient hiring in recent months has so far withstood a series of borrowing cost increases from the Fed but economists expect that the employment data for July will reveal a marked slowdown.
Evidence of a softening labor market has mounted this week amid layoffs at high-profile companies like Walmart and Robinhood, as well as a government report that showed a steep decline in job openings in June.
The median of economic forecasters anticipate 250,000 nonfarm payrolls were added in July, according to Bloomberg. The figure would mark the lowest monthly gain since December and a significant drop from 372,000 jobs added in June. The unemployment rate stood at a near-historic low of 3.6% in June.
Moreover, the expected figure would signal a departure from the robust hiring sustained over the first half of 2022, during which the economy added an average of 461,000 jobs each month.
“The labor market has been a bright spot in the economy but there are signs that the labor market is clearly cooling,” Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at the career site Glassdoor, told ABC News. “It does seem like the labor market is healthy — even as demand slows, layoffs are still very slow.”
While a hiring slowdown may alarm economists and everyday Americans, the signal of weakening labor demand could relieve pressure on the Fed to sustain its aggressive interest rate hikes. At meetings in each of the past two months, the central bank has increased its benchmark interest rate 0.75% — dramatic hikes last matched in 1994.
Despite a series of borrowing cost increases meant to slash prices, inflation has not only persisted but worsened. Data released last month showed that prices jumped a staggering 9.1% in June, which amounts to the highest inflation rate in more than four decades.
Alarmingly, the price increases have coincided with shrinking economic output. Gross domestic product dropped at an annualized rate of 0.9% in the second quarter after falling 1.6% in the previous quarter.
The recent trend qualifies for the shorthand definition of a recession consisting of two consecutive quarters of GDP decline. But the formal designation of a recession depends on a wider range of metrics weighed by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
So far this year, the tight labor market has offered up a strong corner of the economy. But employment data indicated softening on Tuesday, when a report released by the government showed that job openings fell steeply in June to their lowest level in nine months. The 10.7 million job vacancies reported in June, however, remains an elevated figure.
Meanwhile, a slew of major companies in recent days have announced job cuts or hiring slowdowns. Walmart laid off nearly 200 corporate employees on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. A day before, Robinhood announced plans to cut 23% of its staff. Tech giants Apple, Amazon and Google-parent company Alphabet have recently announced they will slow hiring.
Still, the overall robust hiring in recent months defies typical conditions for a recession, said Zhao of Glassdoor.
“It would be very unusual to have a recession when we’re still adding several hundred thousand jobs a month,” he said. “Of course, if we have a surprisingly bad report where we see job losses this month, then that could change the picture.”
(WASHINGTON) — Four people are in critical condition following an apparent lightning strike at a Washington, D.C., park, authorities said Thursday evening.
D.C. Fire and EMS said it had responded to Lafayette Park, located in front of the White House, and was treating the four patients that were found in “the vicinity of a tree.”
Two men and two women were transported to area hospitals with “life-threatening injuries” after the apparent lightning strike, D.C. Fire and EMS said.
Officials said it’s still unclear what the adults were doing prior to the lightning strike, if they knew each other and why they were in the park. The identity of the victims could not be confirmed while the investigation is still ongoing, officials said.
Uniformed U.S. Park Police officers and members of the Secret Service were also on the scene and immediately rendered aid to the victims, an EMS official said during a news conference.
The National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the area Thursday evening.
ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson contributed to this report.
Marilyn LeBlanc-Downey and her son, Skip Bailey, remember Ferris LeBlanc as a brother, uncle and father figure. – ABC News
(NEW ORLEANS) — The New Orleans City Council is reviving an effort to locate the lost remains of several victims of an arson that killed 32 people at a popular French Quarter gay bar in 1973.
The fire at the UpStairs Lounge was the largest mass murder of LGBTQ citizens in United States history until the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016.
The council passed a motion on Thursday directing the city’s property management and legal departments to “take any and all appropriate steps necessary” to “facilitate the recovery” of three unidentified fire victims and one identified victim, Ferris LeBlanc, who were buried in an unmarked graves somewhere in the city’s potter’s field.
LeBlanc, a World War II veteran, has yet to be located despite a years-long effort led by his family to find his remains and return them to California for a military burial.
“Poor record-keeping and indifference continue to hamper the efforts of surviving family members to reclaim the bodies of victims and to provide them the dignity of a proper burial,” wrote Councilmember JP Morrell, whose office is spearheading the effort, in the motion. “The Council believes the City has a moral obligation to take all steps within its power to facilitate the recovery and dignified interment of the victims of the UpStairs Lounge massacre.”
LeBlanc’s family told ABC News that they are encouraged that the city’s leaders are taking action on their behalf.
“The council has promised to get to the bottom of this issue and do everything they can to help us bring an end to this story,” LeBlanc’s family wrote in a statement. “We are cautiously optimistic for this renewed interest and are hopeful it will end in a positive resolution.”
In 2018, five members of Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s office were tasked with the search for LeBlanc’s remains shortly after the release of an ABC News documentary investigating the city’s response to the fire and highlighting pleas from LeBlanc’s family — including his sister Marilyn LeBlanc Downey — for help.
But after several months of searching, officials were unable to locate his remains, telling ABC News they “remain stymied by lost or incomplete records,” and the inquiry was quietly discontinued.
On the eve of the tragedy’s 49th anniversary, however, as the New Orleans City Council issued a formal apology to the victims, survivors and families affected by the fire, Councilmember Morrell pledged to take up the search.
“The City of New Orleans’ lack of response to the deadliest fire in our history has kept individuals from mourning their loved ones, but today we took a step in the right direction,” Morrell said in a statement on June 23. “Moving forward, my office will be working with the family of Ferris LeBlanc, a WWII veteran who died in the fire, to exhume his remains and properly memorialize him with full military honors.”
Survivors, family members, first responders, activists and journalists interviewed by ABC News agreed that the city’s response to the tragedy exposed pervasive prejudices toward the gay community in the otherwise famously tolerant city, an attitude that resulted in, among other indignities, the burial of several unidentified victims in unmarked graves in the city’s potter’s field — LeBlanc among them.
According to Robert Fieseler, author of Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation, shock and sympathy were quickly replaced by ignorance and apathy when people learned “what kind of bar had burned down and who the victims had been.”
“The deadliest fire in New Orleans history provoked not an outpouring of grief for the dead,” Fieseler told ABC News, “but instead, among mainstream residents, humiliation for the release of the dead’s secrets: their unconventional sexual tastes, at a time when the mere discussion of homosexuality was taboo.”
It was the failure of the city’s leaders and institutions to recognize and respond to the tragedy in 1973 that prompted a rare public statement of “historic regret” in 2022.
“The City Council deems it not only necessary but past due to formally apologize,” reads the resolution, adopted unanimously last month, “for the way that those who perished were not adequately and publicly mourned as valuable and irreplaceable members of the community.”
Local media hailed the move as a “small but significant step” in the healing process that acknowledged the city’s “indifference, if not hostility, toward the gay community” at the time, the painful legacy of which lingers to this day.
“We will continue,” LeBlanc’s family wrote in a statement. “We all hope for the day when this story will end as it should.”
(BLOOMINGTON, Minn.) — Shoppers were sent running for safety at the Mall of America Thursday, after police said shots were fired at the Minnesota shopping center.
Police responded to an “active incident” on the northwest side of the mall Thursday evening, the Bloomington Police Department tweeted, saying at that time that “numerous officers are on scene.”
Within an hour, the police department said officers had secured the scene. A suspect has not been apprehended, and no injuries have been reported, police said.
Bloomington Police Department Chief Booker Hodges said during a press conference that shots were fired near the Nike store, and that officers on the scene within 30 seconds.
“After looking at video, we see two groups getting into some type of altercation at the cash register of the Nike store,” Hodges said. “One of the groups left but instead of walking away, they decided to display a complete lack of respect for human life — they decided to fire multiple rounds into a store with people.”
The individuals responsible have not yet been located, the chief said.
“This is an isolated incident,” the department said on Twitter. “The suspect fled the MOA on foot and officers are in the process of interviewing witnesses.”
The Mall of America alerted via Twitter that it was on lockdown “following a confirmed isolated incident” at one of its tenant spaces.
Footage taken by shoppers showed people sheltering in place, including a large crowd in the basement of the mall.
The lockdown has since been lifted. Shoppers on the mall’s second level have been asked to wait for an escort, while all others were advised to leave.
The mall will be closed for the rest of the evening.
The shopping mall is located in Bloomington, a suburb of the Twin Cities.
