AUBURN HILLS, Mich. (WXYZ) — Police say that there is no confirmed shooter and no reported injuries after reports of an active shooter situation at Great Lakes Crossing outlet mall in Auburn Hills Saturday evening.
There was a report of an active shooter at Great Lakes Crossing Mall. There has been no confirmed shooter, there is no one injured at this time. Police personnel are on scene clearing the mall at this time.
— Auburn Hills Police Department (@AHPOLICE) April 8, 2023
Police confirmed to 7 Action News that no one was struck by gunfire.
Authorities told 7 Action News that around 6:20 p.m., two officers in the mall saw two people fighting and tased one of them. While that was happening, they say someone in the crowd yelled "shots fired."
"I was getting a shoe for a customer and I come back out, I look over by subway and all you hear is girls screaming," said Enddiea Reese, who was working at the Finish Line inside the store and saw the fight.
"We look over, it’s two girls fighting and then it starts to be a big crowd and everybody's like piled up. Then you see two boys and stuff, then you see an officer run through trying to break it apart, but ends up being beat up in the process too. 2 seconds later you hear somebody run past and go, 'he has a gun' and you hear 2 or 4 more people saying it. It was like a wreck, everything stopped, my heart stopped."
The two individuals involved in that initial fight were handcuffed, but fled the mall and have not been located by police as of late Saturday evening.
Deputy Chief Scott McGraw spoke to 7 Action News after the incident, as he was clearly angry with how much unconfirmed information was being passed around online.
"Social media became inundated with claims of shots fired and it’s almost trending online, in situations like this is it frustrating to see that spread of misinformation," McGraw said. "It’s hard to that message out when everybody is flooding it with misinformation for sure."
McGraw said that screaming "shots fired" in a crowd like that can have legal ramifications, as if the intent was to create chaos, it is a crime.
Investigators are looking into who started the "shots fired" claims. If you know anything regarding this incident, please reach out to the Auburn Hills Police Department.
This is the second incident to happen at a mall in Oakland County today, as earlier this afternoon, Novi Police were at Twelve Oaks Mall to investigate a bomb threat. Nordstrom was closed for about 5 hours because of the threat, but has since re-opened. The rest of the mall remained open during that bomb threat.
"Where we were working a lot of us were upset because we had been there for hours and nobody told us to evacuate," said an employee working in Twelve Oaks at the time. "Like when we were leaving we were all shaking and really, really upset."
According to police, the person that made that threat over the phone requested $2,000 worth of gift cards. Police never found anything suspecious in Nordstrom before re-opening the store.
