Crabtree Mall shoppers still shaken by chaotic scene
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Angelique Meguess is still distraught days after a reported shooting at Crabtree Valley Mall.
"I heard four distinctive gun shots," she said.
She was inside Kay Jewelers on Saturday afternoon when the panic set in.
"People just scattered. It was just screaming and babies crying," she said.
Store employees raced to protect customers.
More than a dozen of them huddled together in a back bathroom.
"The employees of Kay's immediately grabbed everybody in the store and pushed us to the back, put us in a bathroom and locked the door, and they brought the walls down," said Meguess. "People were praying out loud asking God to help us, Jesus please help us."
Meguess started posting on Facebook and calling family to tell them she was hiding.
Police eventually came to the store to evacuate it. The group in the store was among the last outside the building.
"There were chairs tipped over, there were drinks, food on the floor. There was shoes and earrings and purses and cell phones and sunglasses and shopping bags all over the place, and it was like a scene out of a scary movie," she said.
A woman who was in the bathroom with Meguess stayed by her side as the group ran toward the exit.
Meguess jumped into her car as they sped off.
More than 10,000 people were inside Crabtree Valley Mall at the time of the incident.
Sarah, who did not want to share her last name, was in the bathroom in Belk when the chaos erupted.
"My phone rang, and it was my mom, and she was crying, and all she said was you need to get out, you need to get out," Sarah said.
READ MORE ABOUT THE LOCKDOWN HERE
Her mother's boyfriend, a military veteran, rushed back inside the mall to help people to safety.
"That's what I've been trained to do my whole life. It's in my nature," said the boyfriend, DJ. "I just went in and started running, tried to direct everybody."
Police say they don't have any evidence of gunfire, but the sound Meguess said she heard still keeps her up at night.
"If you've heard a gunshot before, the brain knows what it heard and I heard that," she said.
PHOTOS: Crabtree Valley Mall after reports of shots fired
