Police identify gunman in mall shooting

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Map shows the details of the Columbia Mall and locates it near Baltimore.; 2c x 7 inches; 96.3 mm x 177 mm;

Police have identified the gunman in the Maryland mall shooting that killed two people as a 19 year old from suburban Washington.

Howard County Police Chief William McMahon said Darion Marcus Aguilar of College Park, Maryland, arrived at the mall shortly after 10 a.m. on Saturday armed with a Mossburg 12-gauge shotgun and used it to kill two workers at a store on the upper level of the Mall of Columbia before killing himself.

McMahon said police are trying to determine whether Aguilar knew either of the victims.

Police identified the victims as 21-year-old Brianna Benlolo of College Park, and 25-year-old Tyler Johnson of Ellicott City, Maryland. Both worked at a skateboard shop called Zumiez.

It took hours to identify the shooter since he was carrying ammunition and a backpack and police thought he may have had explosives, McMahon said. When the body was searched, police found crude homemade explosives in the backpack.

"When we originally found the shooter, he still had a lot of ammunition on his person," McMahon said at a news conference Sunday morning.

McMahon said he didn't know if Aguilar had a criminal record. No motive has been given for the shooting.

"There are a lot of unanswered questions," McMahon said.

Very few details were released about Aguilar. He apparently lived with his mother in the suburb of College Park, where the University of Maryland is located. McMahon didn't know if Aguilar was a student there.

According to McMahon, Aguilar purchased the shotgun last month at a shop in neighbouring Montgomery County.

Aguilar took a taxi to the mall and roamed its halls before shots rang out within an hour. Police arrived at the scene just 2 minutes after an emergency call came into authorities at 11:15 a.m. When they arrived, they found three bodies at the Zumiez skateboard shop on the upper level.

Five others were injured in the midmorning shooting and its aftermath. All had been released from hospitals by Saturday evening. Only one person was injured by gunfire.

"This was a very scary incident," Howard County Executive Ken Ulman said. "There were a lot of people very close to where this happened."

Earlier, McMahon praised mall patrons for doing the right thing by sheltering in place and not stampeding toward the exits.

"We actually have drilled on this in the past and that experience has been very beneficial to us," McMahon said Saturday.

A news release Saturday night said police found and disabled "two crude devices that appeared to be an attempt at making explosives using fireworks." Police were searching the mall with dogs overnight, which is standard procedure, and the mall was to remain closed through Tuesday.

Joan Harding of Elkridge, Maryland, was shopping with her husband, David, for a tiara for their granddaughter's 18th birthday. She said she heard something heavy falling, followed by gunshots and people running.

"My husband said, 'Get down!' and the girl that worked in the store said, 'Get in the back,'" Harding said. That is where they hid until police searched the mall and signalled it was safe to leave.

Zumiez's chief executive, Rick Brooks, said the company was making counselling available for employees in the area.

Benlolo's grandfather, John Feins, said in a telephone interview from Florida that his granddaughter had a 2-year-old son and that the job at Zumiez was her first since she went back to work after her son's birth.

"She was all excited because she was the manager there," he said.

He said he had spoken with his daughter, Brianna's mother, earlier in the day, but didn't know who the gunman was or whether the person knew his granddaughter.

"It's senseless. It's totally, totally senseless," he said.

He described his daughter's family as a military family that had moved frequently and had been in Colorado before moving to Maryland about two years ago. He said his granddaughter was on good terms with her son's father, and they shared custody.

"I mean what can you say? You go to work and make a dollar and you got some idiot coming in and blowing people away," he said.

The mall is at the centre of the town that's a suburb of both Baltimore and Washington, and it typically opens at 10 a.m. on Saturdays. It was filled with shoppers and employees when the shots rang out before noon.

Tonya Broughton of Silver Spring, Maryland, was with a friend getting facials for a "girls' morning out," she said. "The only thing I heard was all the people running and screaming and saying 'There's a shooter! There's a shooter!'" she said.

Wearing a gel face mask, she and her friend hid in a Victoria's Secret store, as her anxious thoughts turned to her family.

People were directed out of the mall and into a parking lot, where some boarded a bus and others walked toward their cars. Police cars blocked off various entrances to the mall. Some people were seen crying and hugging. Detectives interviewed witnesses as they emerged from the mall.

Allison Cohen, who works at the apparel store Lucky Brand Jeans, said she always felt safe at the mall.

"I truly never thought something like this would ever happen here," Cohen said. "It's really, really shocking."