West News Wire: A lone shooter has claimed at least nine lives and injured seven others, including children, in a mall close to Dallas in Texas.
According to authorities, the lone shooter who opened fire outside of the Allen Premium Outlets mall in Allen, Texas on Saturday was shot and killed by a police officer. This was confirmed by the city’s police chief, Brian Harvey.
Local authorities said that the injured were taken to close-by trauma centres.
Jon Boyd, the chief of the Allen Fire Department, stated that his team transported at least nine people who had been shot to local hospitals.
Eight of the injured victims, whose ages ranged from 5 to 61, were being treated in trauma centres, according to a statement from Medical City Healthcare, which manages 16 hospitals in the area, but did not specify their conditions.
An unnamed eyewitness informed reporters that the shooter “was walking down the sidewalk just shooting his gun outside,” adding that “He was just shooting his gun everywhere for the most part.”
Aerial footage of the situation also showed a sizable gathering of people heading out of the mall as scores of police stood guard. A video shared on social media showed individuals sprinting through a parking lot as gunfire could be heard in the background.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has described the incident as an “unspeakable tragedy.”
“There’s no more safe places. I don’t know what to do,” a local was cited as saying.
The city of Allen is a community of about 100,000 people, located about 25 miles (40 km) northeast of Dallas.
The shooting came as communities around the United States are reeling from a spate of school shootings, including the massacre at an elementary school in Texas last year, in which nineteen students and two teachers were killed.
President Joe Biden has urged Congress to pass federal legislation to solve the nation’s gun epidemic and reinstate the 1994–2004 assault weapons prohibition.
In the United States, where the number of gun violence victims is higher than in any other nation, there are more firearms than people.
The Gun Violence Archive reports that there have been more than 195 mass shootings in the nation so far this year.
According to a Gallup poll conducted in October 2022, the majority of Americans want tougher regulations governing the sale of firearms, with 57% of respondents expressing this.
