Gardens Mall shooting: 1 injured in Valentine's Day gunfire; police search for 2 suspects

PALM BEACH GARDENS — Palm Beach Gardens police are searching for two men they believe are responsible for the shooting at The Gardens Mall on Wednesday that sent employees and last-minute Valentine's Day shoppers fleeing for cover.

The police department announced Thursday afternoon that officers found one person at a local hospital with a non-life-threatening gunshot wound stemming from Wednesday's shooting. The agency has yet to announce an arrest in connection with the incident.

Investigators said it was neither a mass shooting nor a random one, but did not say more in its latest press release, issued at 2:30 p.m. Thursday.

The Gardens Mall reopened at 10 a.m. Thursday. Employees who returned to work poked their heads into neighboring stores in search of the answers police had yet to give them.

Katie, an employee who asked to be identified by her first name only, said she felt like she was living in a movie when the gunfire began Wednesday afternoon. She fled for safety, returning to the mall at 7 p.m. to collect the things she'd left behind.

"It was really creepy here when I returned," Katie said Thursday. "Food was left sitting on tables, clothes were everywhere and music was still playing. No one thinks they're the exception until they are. Life is weird like that."

Shoppers return to Gardens Mall in the wake of Valentine's Day shooting

The grassy areas surrounding the mall, where drivers and pedestrians had collected one day earlier, were empty by the time it reopened Thursday. Some stores, including Starbucks and the Apple Store, delayed their usual openings until 11 a.m.

Crowds were thinner than usual when the doors opened but grew larger by noon. The first shoppers to arrive said they weren't worried about a repeat of Wednesday's events.

“This is probably the safest place in Palm Beach County today,” said Mary, a 70-year-old Loxahatchee woman who asked to be identified by her first name only. ”I have no concerns about being here. Things like that don’t usually happen two days in a row.”

Mary works at the mall and said she returned Thursday to calm her co-workers and encourage them to carry out business as usual. At the nearby California Pizza Kitchen, employee Tami Anderson said she arrived at her shift early to pick up her purse. She, like many others, left it behind in a frenzy Wednesday.

“My first reaction was, ‘Are you f***ing kidding me? This is happening in our mall?’ ” said Anderson, 59, of Palm Beach Gardens. “Hearing the screaming and watching people running was like something I see on TV. It blew me away.”

Anderson said she worked to evacuate the store’s employees — some of whom are wheelchair-bound — before she left herself. Despite the terror, she said she feels safe returning to the mall.

“We have really good staff. I know the security did everything right," Anderson said. "All I want now is some information. What was the motive? This gun thing is very scary.”

Orlando Almodovar, a 32-year-old shopper visiting from Port Saint Lucie, sounded almost resigned to the possibility of a shooting at a mall, where insufficient funds were once the greatest danger a person faced.

“That’s just life,” he said Thursday morning. “You have to be careful nowadays. There are too many dangerous people in the world that don’t have common sense.”

Security patrols shopping mall day after shooting, employees comfort one another

The mall showed no signs of the previous day's shooting Thursday morning. All sections were opened to shoppers, and all storefronts were staffed. Security officers were visible throughout the mall, patrolling its walkways. All escalators were operational.

One child skipped around the fountains in the center of the mall. Another played by the escalators at the east end of the mall near Nordstrom, where some shoppers and employees have said the shooting took place.

Daisy Hackshaw, 21, of West Palm Beach, staffed the eBar outside of Nordstrom alone on Thursday morning. She said a coworker did not show up for work. She heard that he injured himself jumping over the cafe's counter trying to run out of the mall during Wednesday's shooting.

Felix Veguilla of North Palm Beach is a manager at the mall's Shake Shake. He said he was grateful that he didn’t hear of any injuries among the mall staff.

“It was a little scary, but I definitely am glad to be back here. This is home to us,” said Veguilla, 50. “I think it could have been worse, and I’m grateful that the mall did their job. Security reacted quickly, and we felt safe.”

At various locations around the mall, employees visited others to share their experiences and check to see if workers at different stores were safe.

Gardens Mall shooting: What to know about north county's upscale shopping, entertainment and dining locale

Jose Rojas, one employee at the mall, said he was “1,000 percent” afraid to return to work Thursday.

“I am traumatized,” said Rojas, 26, of West Palm Beach. “This is something that I didn’t expect to happen at this location. It was very hard, but what matters is that we are all alive.”

Rojas said he heard around five or six gunshots Wednesday, but he couldn’t identify from which direction they came from.

“These are our lives,” Rojas said. “Who is to say that the shooter will not come back today?”

Active shooter? Palm Beach Gardens statement prompts questions

The language used by Palm Beach Gardens police in the department's post on X, formerly Twitter, about the incident — "was not an active shooter event and does not appear to be a random shooting " — led some to question what the term "active shooter" means.

The FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security define an active shooter as a person actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area. In most cases, there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims.

By comparison, a targeted shooting usually involves a pattern or method in selecting victims. Most shootings police agencies investigate are targeted shootings.

Mall had few incidents of gun violence since it opened in 1988

The mall, owned by The Forbes Company of Southfield, Michigan, is anchored by high-end department stores such as Nordstrom, Macy's and Bloomingdale's and is home to luxury shops such as Brooks Brothers, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel and Tiffany & Co.

Before Wednesday, it had seen few incidents of gun violence since it opened along PGA Boulevard in 1988. The most recent came in 2017, when a fight between two men began in the mall's food court, moved outside, and led to one man firing at the other's car.

In 2015, a security guard fired five warning shots as two alleged shoplifters fled the Saks Fifth Avenue store. No one was killed or seriously injured.

The shooting took place on the sixth anniversary of the Parkland shooting when a gunman killed 17 students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Gardens Mall shooting: 1 injured, police searching for 2 people of interest