I Was Involved in A Shooting

My friend Ari and I were at the mall, an ordinary thing to do for ordinary teenagers. We walked through clothing stores, the Vans store, Active, Pacsun, and other stores. We got food and drinks. While we were in Pacsun, an alarm went off. I didn’t really acknowledge it at first, and neither did Ari. We were looking at a shirt. Some people in the store walked outside and said that someone had stolen something and was being chased down. Ari and I got curious and looked outside the store, but the person had already passed. It wasn’t anything huge or panicking, so we just forgot about it and moved on. We were going to go to Nordstrom on the second floor, but Ari had to go to the bathroom, so we stayed on the first floor. We had come out of the bathroom and not even a minute after we had walked out of the bathroom, we saw a guy that looked about 17 or 18 sprinting past us, and following him was another guy his age, then we saw a whole crowd of people. I thought they were having some sort of protest or something, and Ari thought that there was someone famous here. Everyone was screaming and running. We were so confused, and we asked someone running past us what had happened. “Shooting! There’s been a shooting!” She screamed. Ari and I sprinted for our lives. We managed to get out of the exit, but we didn’t stop there. We sprinted all the way past the corner. I had never run so fast in my life. Thoughts rushed through my head. I thought about my friends, and my family, and I thought I was going to lose everything I had. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to the people I loved and the things I loved. We had stopped by the time we turned the corner, and a woman in a blue minivan had pulled up with her window down, and she asked us what happened. Ari said, “There’s been a shooting! Please help us.” She let us come in her car and she immediately started driving. She asked us where she needed to drop us off, and she told us to contact our parents. Ari called her mom, and I, still processing what had just happened, started hysterically sobbing. I tried calling my parents about a million times, with no answer. We were both crying out eyes out in the back of that car, but Ari knew how to keep her cool more than I did. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I had never thought anything like this would happen to me. By the time Ari had talked to her mom and told the woman driving to drop us off at a hospital to meet her parents, I had been crying so long and hard that I couldn’t breathe and my face and hands were tingling and had turned numb. I was about to pass out. Ari was the one being practical and I was the one that couldn’t think straight in this situation. The only thing I knew how to do was run. I knew that this event would be so hard for me to forget, and it would take a long time for both me and Ari to recover. It was so scary knowing that I could’ve lost my best friend and my whole world at that moment. And thinking about it while I write this, I am so grateful to that woman, who was a complete stranger, to save us and take us away from danger, even though we were complete strangers to her. We met Ari’s parents at the hospital and we were still sobbing. The way home I was still crying hysterically and Ari was still in complete shock and crying. We got to her house and it took us a while to calm down. My mom came, gave me a hug, and told Ari she was relieved we were both okay. When I got home my dad gave me a really long hug and I talked with my grandma on the phone. They were both so relieved. Later that day almost everyone I knew had posted about it, and it hurt me so bad looking at their posts because I knew that they had no idea what it was like to go through that, and they honestly couldn’t care because they had “bigger things” to worry about. After this experience, I have learned that little things in life really don’t matter, like what kind of clothes you wear or who you hang out with. All I could think about during the shooting was living and getting out. I can’t believe how lucky I am to be able to sit here and write out every detail of my experience knowing that we survived. I am so thankful for the support that all my friends have given me and I am so lucky to have them in my life.  And knowing that I went through this at age 12, is a scarring experience. No one should ever have to go through this, no matter what age.

“A man argued with his former wife at a Southern California mall before shooting her to death and turning the gun on himself, authorities said, leading shoppers to run into stores and out the exits Saturday.
The 33-year-old Los Angeles-area gunman was wounded and taken to a hospital, officials said. He was in critical condition, the Ventura County Star newspaper reported .
The man went to a store at The Oaks mall in the city of Thousand Oaks, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Los Angeles, and had an argument with the 30-year-old victim before shooting her, Ventura County sheriff's Sgt. Eric Buschow said.
The divorced couple have children, who have been found safe, said Buschow, adding that initial indications show the shooting was a murder and attempted suicide.
The gunshots at the shopping center with open-air and indoor shopping space led to some chaos and a lockdown.
Jeffrey Simpson, 17, was shopping with his mother at a department store when an announcement came over the intercom about a threat outside the mall.
"I went to Nordstrom to get pants, and the next thing I know, the doors are being sealed," Simpson told The Associated Press.
He said he and his mom were "a little shaken" but OK. They were in the store for more than an hour but shoppers were free to move around and employees were helping people stay comfortable and calm, Simpson said.
Matt Lemieux told the newspaper that he was working on his computer inside a coffee store when he suddenly saw "a whole group of people" running by.
"It was creepy," he said.”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/dead-injured-shooting-southern-california-mall-53825028