Two men are in the hospital after Auburn Police said they shot each other at a gas station just before 6:00 p.m. Tuesday evening. The Auburn Police Department said they do not believe this was random and detectives are trying to figure out how the men knew each other.

“When we arrived, we did discover one male who had been shot here at the scene now there also was another male that was shot that was found later in Kent,” Auburn PD PIO Kolby Crossley said. “This was a kind of a shootout between two people, there was a confrontation, one person was in a vehicle and the other person was standing outside of that vehicle, something arose between them and they started shooting at each other.”

Crossley said the shooters and the victims are the same. One of the men drove off about two miles from the gas station to the Kent Station shopping mall. Witnesses said he got out of his car and started yelling for help.

“He was shot, he drove in here, my coworker saw him run down the street yelling I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!” Wesley Klingele, a witness, said.

Witnesses there said police arrived at the scene quickly.

“The police were right here like right here on their stuff,” Joanie Unseth, another witness said. “The man drove his car and then he jumped out and he was screaming that he’d been shot and then all the people helped him.”

Both men were taken to Harborview with life-threatening injuries.

“You never think it’s going to happen, that you’re going to see that kind of thing you know, until it happens to you,” Klingele said.