January, 5th 2011

Hello my lovely ladies,
This post is going to be a little bit on the personal side as I talk about an experience I had while being at work.

Last Wednesday, at about 12:00pm, during our busy lunch hour at a restaurant in the Chandler Fashion Center, I had one of the scariest experience in my life.
I was at the register waiting for costumers when I started noticing people in the mall rushing to the exits, I started watching them to try and figure out what was going on. As I look at one of the big opening towards the mall a lady caught my eye and I got to read her lips as she said "They are shooting in the mall!" As soon as she finished saying that a loud, scary alarm went on the whole mall announcing "Everyone please evacuate the mall NOW!" Everything happened so fast that my first reaction was to run to the back door of the restaurant with the other cashier. My heart was pounding since nobody knew exactly where or what was going on. The parking lot starting getting filled with people as all the employees and shoppers evacuated the mall. Right away you could hear all the cops, ambulances and helicopters flying above our head. Minutes later we found the shooting had been by the Sears located on the opposite side of the restaurant I work at. Undercover cop cars started arriving next to us and securing the area telling everyone to leave if they could. After about 30 minutes of waiting our manager was able to retrieve our purses with our car keys from the restaurant. They told us we could leave if we wanted and if our shift ended in about an hour. I took there ready to get into my car when I saw  and undercover cop lady get her gun out and slowly start walking by the trash cans. I knew it was the right time for me to get out of there. I made it home safe and turned on the news right away to find out what exactly was going on...

Eventually I found out what exactly happened. A current ex-convict had been chased by the Marshals as he drove to the mall and decided to start shooting at the officers before rushing inside the mall. As everyone got evacuated, the police got informed of more gunshots across the street at a Baja Fresh Restaurant. All the local restaurants, and even an elementary school close by were on Lock down. They guy had about 2 or 3 hostages and refused to get out. After a couple hours of experts trying to convince him to get out, he finally gave up and walked out to be arrested. Luckily nobody was hurt in this whole experience, but thousands of people were left with a day they would never forget.

If you would like to know more about this case here are a couple of websites where you can read about it as well as some videos taken by one of my managers and other mall employees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnPehE7CFVs

 http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/cop_shop/article_dfe1f9d6-1904-11e0-bf3c-001cc4c002e0.html?mode=image

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0LaSZz94_Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uiGmeulqRQ
http://www.youtube.com/user/abfabphxboi - Restaurant after employees were able to get back in the mall.

*Did you hear about this on the news? If so, where do you live?
*Have you ever experienced anything similar?
*What do you think your reaction would of been being in this type of situation?