Columbiana Centre reopens after Saturday night shooting

Columbiana Centre reopened for its normal hours on Sunday, although with a heavy police presence after shots were fired Saturday night inside the Harbison Boulevard mall.

“We’re just blessed there’s no injuries,” said Andrew Peach, general manager at the mall.

Peach praised the coordination between Columbia police and numerous other agencies.

“With a really bad situation, it turned out to be a successful operation from a coordination standpoint,” he said.

Police have not received reports of anyone getting shot during the incident, department spokeswoman Jennifer Timmons said.

Witnesses told authorities that “two people pulled guns and fired into the air” after a fistfight outside Kay Jewelers inside the mall, Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook said. There were no indications that other shots were fired after the initial burst of gunfire, Holbrook said, but some witnesses told of hearing three of four rounds of fire.

Investigators are looking for two men, both young African-Americans, Holbrook said. While there is no indication that the incident was gang related, he said, nothing is being ruled out.

Lexington County resident Jameika Jacobs, 23, told The State newspaper she was visiting the mall with her boyfriend when the chaos started. They left near the Dillard’s exit, and that’s when Jacobs said she saw a man tuck a gun into his pants while leaving with the crowd.

“He didn’t say anything,” she said. “All he did was look me dead in the eye.”

Jacobs said she didn’t say anything at the time because she didn’t want the man to react. She and her boyfriend got to their car just as police arrived on the scene.

Cayce resident Kat Smith, 20, said she and a group of friends had been hanging out not far from the mall and had stopped off at the food court to get something to eat. They ended up working crowd control for a brief time as people tried to find a way out.

A lot of people were screaming and “running the wrong direction,” she said.

Several people tried to hide behind the carousel in the Food Court, she said.“I kind of stayed back a minute and helped all the people who were tucked behind the carrousel thinking there was an exit behind that.”

Two of Smith’s friends stayed behind to help a woman back to her feet, and they all regrouped outside shortly before the police arrived, she said.

Columbia resident Shana White, 30, said she had just finished up at the mall’s nail salon with a friend when people started trying to escape the mall.

She and the friend separated, and White had just passed Auntie Anne’s Pretzels “when I saw a bunch of people running toward me screaming. I immediately turned around; I didn’t even ask what was going on.”

White said she and others hid in The Limited, where the store manager cut off the lights and ushered everyone to the back.

She called the friend who was with her in the nail salon to make sure she was okay. “I was on the phone with her the whole time making sure she was okay,” White said.

After about 15 to 20 minutes, an officer found the shoppers hiding in The Limited and told them to exit through the food court, according to White.

“As soon as we saw the doors, people started screaming and running again,” she said.

Though officials said there was only one burst of gunfire, White said she heard three shots as she was exiting the mall — and that an officer who had stopped her, intending to search her, told her to flee.

The evacuation left her shaken, White said, and she would have preferred to stay hidden in the shop until police knew more about the shooters and what was going on.

“I would have rather stayed in the store in a safe place ... than to be put out in the open and have to run for my life again,” she said.

The police evacuated people when they did “for safety,” according to Timmons.

Atchara Hudson, sales manager at Dillard’s, said her staffers were well prepared Saturday night because they had undergone active shooter training last month. She had never seen anything like Saturday’s shooting incident in her more than 10 years with the store, she said.

Hudson said she was in the stock room when the incident occurred, and several people found the room and tried to hide there.

“I said, ‘This is not the place to hide – we’ve got to get out,’” Hudson said.

Store policy is not to tell customers that there is a shooter, but to have employees escort them outside and to make an announcement asking everyone to vacate the premises, she added. Employees and customers quickly left, including one woman who had been trying on shoes, Hudson said. The customer left one of her shoes behind.

Anyone with video of the incident is encouraged to contact Columbia police, Timmons said. Call the Columbia Police Department at (803) 545-3500.

This story was originally published February 21, 2016 at 12:55 PM with the headline "Columbiana Centre reopens after Saturday night shooting."