The video on a cell phone recorded by Jovonta Patton features him and another friend in the Gucci store in Nordstrom in the Mall of America.
There’s a sudden commotion and the phone then moves to the floor.
“While she’s filming it, we hear gunshots,” remembers Patton. “What you see in the video caught us all off guard, and it’s all in real time, so it’s all of our first response.”
Patton the North Minneapolis dad of 3 daughters He was in the Gucci store to shoot a social media post and purchase gifts for his family.
He claims he was in the process of asking his friend if she’d seen an item she likedat which point a loud rumble was heard in the shop.
“That explosive sound was just like a boom, and then you heard screaming,” Patton states. “My first thought was -do I know who is there in order to kill the most people possible. Let me take these women out of the way and then we went to the rear of the Gucci store that is extremely secure.”
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Along with hundreds of other shoppers Patton and his companions remained inside during a one-hour lockdown.
Police say the shooting started at around 8 p.m. in the aftermath of an altercation broke out among nine people at the Nordstrom store.
According to authorities, an individual pulled out a firearm and killed and shot a 19-year-old metro-area resident.
“Yesterday was the first firearms-related homicide in the history of Mall of America,” Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges said to reporters.
Hodges states that after an overnight probe — early on Saturday morning — officers from various area departments and departments, including SWAT agents who were from Edina and Minnetonka conducted the search warrant at an St. Louis Park address and arrested five individuals including two men aged 18 and over and three 17-year-old boys.
The 18-year-olds are named by their names: Taeshawn Wright, and Deandre Depratto.
Due to their age 17-year-olds are viewed as juvenile suspects.
So, their identities haven’t been made public by the authorities.
