An 8-year-old boy died Friday in a shooting at a Hoover, Alabama, shopping mall that left three others injured, police said.
Hoover Police Chief Nicholas Derzis said the boy was killed in an afternoon shooting at the Riverchase Gallery. The police chief said a girl and two adults were also hospitalized after the shooting. Authorities did not release the names of the victims.
Police did not give a reason for the shooting. Derzis said police are working on promising leads, but did not say if they had identified suspects.
“This is certainly a tragic situation, when you have an innocent child who is caught in the middle of an altercation among others,” said Derzis.
Multiple shots were reported near the food court inside the mall, police said.
“We do not know at this time what led to the shooting or how many gunmen were involved,” Capt. Gregg Rector said in a previous press release.
Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato said he visited the boy’s parents on Friday night.
“This was just a senseless tragedy, and of course they are devastated by this,” said Brocato. He asked city residents to pray for the family.
The mall was evacuated after the shooting. The Hoover Police asked anyone to witness the shooting to call the authorities.
Annalisa Pope, who works at the Hollister clothing store in the mall, told WBMA-TV in a phone interview that she heard six or seven shots.
“It wasn’t just one or two,” he said. The shots “sounded like they were coming from all directions.”
“It felt so close,” added Pope. “It was very surreal. It doesn’t even feel real right now. You wouldn’t expect something like that to happen out of nowhere on a normal Friday afternoon. “
The mall in the Birmingham suburbs was the site of a 2018 police shooting, when an officer fatally shot a black man after mistaking him for the gunman in a previous shooting at the mall. The shooting of Emantic “EJ” Bradford Jr., 21, sparked a series of protests at the mall. The Alabama attorney general’s office authorized the officer, saying he had acted “reasonably under the circumstances” in the encounter, which lasted approximately five seconds.
