Another shooting happened in a public place on Friday night. The latest occurred in the Mall of America. A 19-year-old man (boy, really) was shot multiple times and killed after an altercation between two groups.
The mall was locked down for roughly an hour.
The Giants, in town for Saturday’s game against the Vikings, stayed in a hotel adjacent to the Mall of America. Giants executive V.P. of communications Pat Hanlon told the Associated Press that he believes some players were in the mall when the shooting happened.
“Everyone is back in the hotel and accounted for now,” Hanlon told the AP.
The shooter remains at large. Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges had some tough talk for the perpetrator, and for anyone who may provide assistance to the guilty party.
“We are going to catch you, we are going to lock you up and you are going to get an orange jumpsuit,” Hodges said, via the AP. “It’s just a matter of when it’s going to happen. . . . If anybody helps these people — I mean so much as buy them a Happy Meal, give them a ride . . . . We’re going to lock you up with them.”
The Mall of America has no metal detectors or other obvious devices to deter the bringing of guns onto the premises. When the NFL made the mall the site of radio row in the week before Super Bowl LII, the absence of any obvious measures of that nature was jarring, frankly.
Hodges told the AP that the mall continuously evaluates security measure, such as placing metal detectors at all entrances.
“If we have an incident where someone decides they want to pull out a gun and shoot somebody with a complete lack of respect for human life, then I still don’t know what we can do to stop that,” Hodges said.
In theory, I suppose you can’t. But you can keep it from happening inside the mall, where hundreds if not thousands of people routinely gather -- and where bystanders can get caught up in what otherwise would be an isolated incident of violence.
The question is whether the mall and its various businesses are willing to spend the money necessary to properly secure the premises. If/when people stop going there because of it, those metal detectors will be installed the very next day.