Pandemic Mall Shootings

Has there been less mass shootings that "usual" or is the seemingly absence of media attention to such violence due to the focus on the pandemic and election 2020 news?

Multiple Mall Shootings in Four Days in January

An explosive mid-January of mall violence took place only a few days after the beginning of 2019.

January 10, 2019

An officer-involved shooting took place at the Visalia Mall, Visalia, California, on Thursday, January 10, 2019. The suspect was injured, arrested, and identified as Richard Sylvester Garcia, 36.
Mid-January 2019, an explosion of violence occurred at four malls around America.

January 11

Members of the Jersey City Police Department in Newport Centre mall, New Jersey, where two people were shot on Friday, January 11, 2019.


January 12

The search was still on for at least two people after two people were hurt in a shooting at the Fashion Place Mall in Murray, Utah, on Saturday, January 12. Most of the activity took place near Crate & Barrel.


January 13

One person is dead after a shooting inside a store at the Carolina Place Mall in Pineville, North Carolina, Sunday afternoon. The shooting happened during an argument between an employee at DTLR and another person. Police say the employee turned himself in and they consider him to be the primary suspect in the investigation.

Highway 77's Mall of America Terrorist Warning

At the intersection of Minnesota State Highway 77* and Interstate 494 sits the Mall of America (MoA), a shopping mall owned by the Triple Five Group. It is located in Bloomington, Minnesota (a suburb of the Twin Cities).

[*In Alan-Abbadessa Green's Suicide Kings (see here from The Sync Book), he greatly details the significance of the number 77 in the JFK assassination and 9/11.]

The Mall contains the United Airlines Flight 93 memorial, for those who died aboard during the September 11, 2001 attacks—the bust of Tom Burnett (who was born and raised in Bloomington) is on the west side of the first floor, next to the fountain in front of Nordstrom.

Thomas Edward Burnett, Jr. (May 29, 1963 – September 11, 2001) was the vice-president and chief operating officer of Thoratec Corporation, a medical devices company based in Pleasanton, California. Burnett was born and grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota. At Thomas Jefferson Senior High School, where he wore jersey No. 11 and then No. 10, he led the Jaguars to the state finals as their starting quarterback in 1980. He graduated in 1981. On September 11, 2001, Burnett, who was born in Bloomington, Minnesota, was a passenger on board United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked as part of the September 11 attacks. He died when the plane crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 

A new video from Al Shabaab purportedly shows the terror group calling for an attack on Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minnesota.

“Be particularly careful” if you intend to visit the Mall of America, the second largest mall in the USA.

That’s the cautionary message Sunday from Jeh Johnson, the U.S. secretary of Homeland Security, in the wake of Somali terrorist group Al-Shabab releasing a video calling for attacks on Western malls. The video specifically mentioned the megamall in Bloomington.

"I'm not telling people to not go to the mall," Secretary Jeh Johnson said on NBC's Meet The Press. "I think that there needs to be an awareness."

He also said, "I'm saying that the public needs to be particularly vigilant."“If anyone is planning to go to the Mall of America today, they’ve got to be particularly careful,” Johnson said in a televised interview with CNN. “There will be enhanced security there, but public vigilance, public awareness and public caution in situations like this is particularly important, and it’s the environment we’re in, frankly.”

Mall of America says it has heightened security after a video threatening a terror attack was apparently released by a Somali militant group with ties to al-Qaeda. The group, al-Shabaab, previously took responsibility for the 2013 attack at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, that left more than 60 people dead.

The video released online focused mostly on the conflict between Kenya and Somalia and the Westgate shopping mall attack. The video calls for similar attacks at the Mall of America and elsewhere.

"If just a handful of mujahideen fighters could bring Kenya to a complete standstill for nearly a week, imagine what a dedicated mujahedeen in the West could do to the American or Jewish-owned shopping centers across the world," an unidentified man says on the video.

"What if such an attack was to occur in the Mall of America in Minnesota? Or the West Edmonton Mall in Canada? Or in London's Oxford Street?" the man says, encouraging supporters to "hurry up, hasten towards heaven and do not hesitate."

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a statement Sunday saying U.S. officials were aware of the call for "Westgate style" attacks against shopping malls in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The Mall of America, among the largest shopping malls in the world with more than 500 stores and 50 restaurants, employs more than 12,000 people. It generally is considered the world's busiest mall, with more than 40 million visitors annually.

Mall officials issued a statement saying it takes any potential threat seriously.

"Mall of America has implemented extra security precautions. Some may be noticeable to guests, and others won't be," the statement said, adding, "The safety and security of our guests, employees and tenants remains our top priority."

Al-Shabaab, based in southern Somalia, was declared a terror organization under U.S. law in 2008. The group, which pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2012, took responsibility for an attack Friday at a Mogadishu hotel targeting government ministers that killed 25.

Johnson, who made appearances on five Sunday shows, said the video threat reflects the militant effort to encourage supporters to conduct attacks in their homelands.

"We're in a new phase now, and I'm afraid that this most recent video release reflects that," Johnson said on ABC's This Week.

A new video from Al Shabaab purportedly shows the terror group calling for an attack on Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minn.

According to Fox 9, the mall is one of three similar targets the terror group specifically names, including West Edmonton Mall in Canada and the Oxford Street shopping area in London.

The video purportedly shows 6 minutes of graphic images and the terrorists celebrating the 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed more than 60 people.

An image of the Mall of America is shown in the video, alongside its GPS coordinates. The mall says it is ramping up its security in response.

Al Shabaab, Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels, claimed responsibility for a Friday attack on a hotel in Somalia's capital that killed 25 people and wounded 40, the country's government said Saturday.

One Islamic extremist rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the gate of the Central Hotel, and another went in and blew himself up, a statement from Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke's office said.

Government officials were meeting at the Central Hotel at the time, and the statement said Mogadishu's deputy mayor and two legislators were among the dead. It was unclear whether the government's report of 25 dead included the two bombers.

Despite the loss of key strongholds in Somalia, Al Shabaab, which is linked to Al Qaeda, continues to stage attacks in the capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere.

The group, designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department in 2008, has close ties to Al Qaeda through its senior leaders. It has attracted several radical volunteers from Minneapolis and Americans began traveling to Somalia in 2007 to join the group.

Somalia's president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, condemned the Friday attack and said it would not derail efforts by his government to restore peace to Somalia, which is recovering from decades of war.

This is the second attack on a hotel in Mogadishu in less than a month. On January 22, 2015, three Somali nationals were killed when a suicide car bomber blew himself up at the gate of a hotel housing the advance party of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who visited the country days later.

Sources 1, 2, 3, and 4.

See also, 

Mall Shootings, 1987 – 2007.

List of Mall Shootings

Clackamas Mall Shooting: Three Dead (2012)

Garden State Plaza Mall Shooting (2013)

Kenya's Westgate Mall Terror Attack (2013)

Dawn of the Dead Film Site Is Scene of Multiple Mall Shooting (2015)

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Bloody Valentine's Day?

It is a full moon on February 14, 2014, from Albania to Sochi, from Alaska to Xinjiang. May everyone be safe on this Bloody Friday.

I have low expectations for humans on February 14th. The love and romance associated with Valentine's Day seem to turn into killings of different varieties. It is as if, of all the days during the year, this one brings forth the most tension for a few individuals.

Extend this to what has been occurring with homicidal-suicidal feelings recently, and the outcomes are tragic. School shootings, domestic violence in murder-suicide clusters, workplace violence, and more. Are mall shootings, church killings, terrorist attacks, and new domestic murder-suicides in our near future? Does Valentine's Day have an international reach? Will violence visit global locations on February 14th?

On February 14, 2008, six people were dead due to a Northern Illinois University shooting, including the gunman. There were 22 casualties in all.

Yesterday, I received a call from a reporter based in Montreal for the Globe and Mail newspaper. He discussed with me, as he described them, "a recent series of multiple murders involving rage-filled men killing their lovers or ex-lovers and their loved-ones. Three cases involving a total of about 10 deaths, in the space of about 2 weeks." 

I pointed out that Valentine's Day could be a day to watch out for and warn about in his article. Unfortunately, the reporter Les Perreaux felt the story won't get published until the weekend due to the fact there just had been a new murder-suicide, on Thursday, February 13th.

This topic hits close to home for me, and I've always acknowledged that. 

My book, The Copycat Effect, is dedicated to my maternal grandmother (pictured above), who died in a Valentine's Day murder-suicide.

I penned that dedication this way:

For Nellie Gray,

The grandmother I never knew,
as she was killed during a murder-suicide
on Valentine’s Day, 1940.

In my book I wrote an entire section entitled the "Significant of Dates," and began with one special example, St. Valentine's Day. I reprint below what you will find in my book about February 14th, from pages 246-247:

Dates are important, anniversary events especially so. Suicides, murder-suicides, murders tend to clump around dates of loss for at-risk victims.

One such date is one that most people assume should be associated with happy feelings, but it is not. That is Valentine’s Day. For many people, it’s a day that speaks more to emptiness and loss than to joy and love.

One cultural event seems to point to this feeling: the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” of February 14, 1929, in Chicago. On this day the alleged henchman of gangster “Scarface” Al Capone murdered seven members of the George “Bugs” Moran gang in a North Clark Street garage. Colorful names, a memorable day, the windy city, a grand crime, and huge headlines have made this event enormously “infamous” in history. Books and movies have fueled the copycat effect of this date.

A year after “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” Ben Hecht...authoredScarface(1930), which was made into a Howard Hughes produced, Howard Hawks directed movie (1932) about the North Clark Street killings. Hughes supposedly asked that Scarfacebe "realistic, as exciting, as grisly as possible." Censors blocked Scarfacefor two years before Hawks got it to theaters.

How does culture make a 1929 event into currency for a future generation? Through the movies and other media, of course. Some Like It Hot(1959) had Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis playing two Chicago musicians who witnessed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and are forced to cross-dress as women in order to hide from Al Capone. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre(1967) starring Jason Robards portrays the event in docudrama style.

But beyond fiction, real murders and murder-suicides have also been linked to the specific Valentine’s Day 1929 gangland murders. The gangland and other ripples from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre certainly demonstrate an awareness of the twilight language of the event.

The individual most often identified as the organizer of the Moran gang killings was Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn, one of Capone's most trusted men. McGurn (whose real name was James DeMora), an expert with the Tommy gun who had an “eye for the ladies,” especially for blonde women, was killed on the eve of Valentine’s Day, 1936. A nickel was put in McGurn's right hand and, next to his body the killers left a humorous valentine card.

Sometimes personal histories reinforce the negative Valentine’s Day link. My grandmother was killed by her second husband on Valentine’s Day, 1940, in Illinois, in a murder-suicide, as my future mother, a 12 old girl, looked on in horror. The copycat effect sometimes hits close to home.

During the 1980s, St. Valentine’s Day was a focus of teen suicide clusters around the United States, and many families felt the impact of the day.

Earlier in the book, I described a teen suicide cluster in Peekskill, New York. I mentioned on February 4, 1984, Robert DeLaValliere, 13, hanged himself in Depew Park, and then I wrote:

Did another teen then imitate DeLaValliere? Ten days after his suicide, 14‑year‑old Justin Spoonhour picked a tree in back of his home and hanged himself. Spoonhour lived in Putnam Valley, five miles north of where DeLaValliere died. His mother graphically described in a People magazine article how she found her boy. "I turned my light on and saw Justin hanging from a tree,” she wrote. "His eyes and mouth were open, and his tongue was swollen and protruding." As we have noted, this was Valentine’s Day in Peekskill.

Elsewhere in The Copycat Effect, Valentine's Day figures as a touchstone for understanding the context of violence in which we find ourselves. I noted:

In 2002, National Review online editor Jonah Goldberg, a conservative, commented on liberal Senator Patrick Moynihan’s 1993 essay, “Defining Deviancy Down,” to make some points about the media’s normalizing of terrorism. Goldberg’s and Moynihan’s insights apply here, in understanding how the media makes “celebrities” of events, which then serve as cultural icons that are held up for emulation by followers. In this way, copycats are produced. Calling the essay “one of the most influential articles of the last decade,” Goldberg notes that “Moynihan argued that deviancy - crime, mental illness, out-of-wedlock births, etc. -- had become so rampant, had so thoroughly soaked into the culture, that we simply had to redefine the abnormal as normal to cope.”

“Moynihan's most famous example was the St. Valentine's Day Massacre,” noted Goldberg. “That event was a major turning point in American history, credited with helping to convince Americans to abandon prohibition…The actual details? Four gangsters murdered seven gangsters. In the early 1990s, Moynihan noted, Los Angeles suffered from the equivalent of one St. Valentine's Day Massacre every weekend. And, of course, we can say much the same about suicide bombings in Israel.”

The above passages are from my 2004 book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines, a work the American media does not wish you to buy or read. In Canada, intriguingly, they are more open to research findings and the lessons learned.