Police kill teen gunman inside Charlotte mall

Christmas Eve descended into chaos Thursday when shots were fired between two groups at a north Charlotte mall and a responding off-duty police officer shot and killed one of the alleged gunmen.

Northlake Mall was jammed with last-minute holiday shoppers when an argument broke out between two groups involved in an ongoing dispute. At least two of the people involved pulled guns and opened fire, on the mall’s lower level near Dick’s Sporting Goods, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said.

Witnesses say hundreds of panicked bystanders screamed and shoved to get away from the area. Others dove under tables at the nearby food court.

Police working at the mall responded. CMPD Chief Kerr Putney said witnesses told police that when off-duty officer Thomas Ferguson reached the scene, one of the gunmen turned and pointed his weapon at Ferguson.

The officer fired his service weapon, Putney said. Daquan Antonio Westbrook, 18, was pronounced dead at the scene. At an evening news conference, Putney said police did not know if the teenager fired any shots at the officer.

Arrest records show that Westbrook was sentenced to 24 months parole in October of 2013 after pleading guilty to possession of stolen goods. He was charged in July 2014 with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, injury to personal property and discharging a weapon on occupied property stemming. The disposition of those charges was not immediately known.

Per CMPD policy, Ferguson, a 19-year veteran of the force, has been placed under paid, administrative leave, Putney said.

The gunfire – some witnesses reported hearing up to 10 shots – sent shoppers scrambling and shoving down mall walkways and running up escalators before they streamed into the parking lot. Some hid behind dumpsters. Others waited for up to 30 minutes as gates to some of the stores came down and blocked their departures. The movie theater was placed on lockdown.

W.T. Harris Boulevard, the heavily traveled main gateway to the mall, became a quagmire as hundreds of cars tried to leave the mall, just as dozens of police cars were barreling to the scene.

Motorists who made it out of the parking lot found ramps to Interstate 77 closed. Dozens of other shoppers left the area on foot or watched from the periphery as police cars, fire trucks and ambulances cordoned off the mall. Still others sat in their cars and tried to compose themselves before driving off.

“I need a cigarette, and I don’t smoke,” said Natasha Columbus of Charlotte, who was shopping about 20 feet from the shooting and initially thought the mall was under terrorist attack.

Witnesses said the gunfire started outside of Journeys, a shoe store on the lower level of the mall near Dick’s.

Jake Wallace, 24, of Boone, N.C., was in Dick’s Sporting Goods when shots rang out nearby – about 30 feet outside the store, near Journey’s shoe store on the lower level, according to police.

“I thought someone dropped something. It was extremely loud. Didn’t think anything of it,” Wallace said. “You don’t think gunshots. But then I heard a rapid fire. Once hearing that, there was no mistaking it. It sounded like someone was unloading a clip.”

Chaos erupted as shoppers dove for cover or tried to get out the door, Wallace said.

Don Willis, who works as a valet at the mall, said he heard gunshots, then saw a wave of people exiting the mall.

“It was wild. I heard the first shot and I thought, ‘Wait. What was that?’ And kind of like started turning around and walking and saw this huge line of people – wave of people coming – and I thought a bomb was about to go off, and I just took off,” he said.

Zindy Cruz, 19, was in the food court with her brother and father when they heard shots being fired. She and her family ducked under their table until things calmed down. Then they got up and walked toward where they were told the shots were fired.

From the second floor, they could see into Journeys where she said she saw a man lying on the floor who appeared dead.

Co-workers Natasha Columbus and Nicole Kirkpatrick were in the Locker Room sporting goods store on the lower level of the mall near Journeys when the shots rang out. “Pow, pow, pow, pow,” eight or nine in all, Kirkpatrick said.

Columbus said she bolted to the back of the store. Kirkpatrick went to the front, toward the sound of gunfire, and looked through a store window.

Fifteen to 20 feet away in a mall common area, she said, she saw a body lying prone on the polished floor.

After the gunshots, an automatic gate came down and blocked Locker Room patrons from leaving the store for at least 30 minutes.

In the same store, Lisa Sawyer Phillips, 46, and her 26-year-old son were looking for Carolina Panthers T-shirts when they heard the shots. Customers ran to the back of the store, where workers escorted them through a back door that leads to a hallway, Phillips said.

They waited there for a half-hour before they were able to evacuate the mall, she said.

“That was probably the scariest part, not knowing how many people were actually shooting,” Phillips said.

“Usually, I’m calm and collected and can handle things,” she said. But as the sound of gunshots hit the air, Phillips said, “I really broke down.”

At the AMC Northlake movie theater, about 100 people who had just finished watching a 12:45 p.m. screening of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” were surprised when an employee came in and announced there had been a shooting and that the mall was on lockdown.

Out in the mall, hundreds of shoppers pushed and shoved to leave the area.

Earlier, the emergency medical services agency Medic said one person had a leg injury after an incident at the mall. Two other people were being treated, one who had gone into labor and another patient who had an asthma attack, the agency tweeted.

Caryl Santos, a 20-year-old sophomore at East Carolina University, said she was standing in the checkout line at Belk when suddenly people began running toward the exit. “I had no idea what to do so I grabbed my mom, dropped my stuff and ran out of the store,” she said.

The scene was chaotic, she said: People ran to their cars. Some hid behind dumpsters.

Justin Biddle, 19, and his girlfriend Chyna Williams, 17, were at the mall for some last-minute shopping for her mother. They had gotten off the escalator in Macy’s and headed for Victoria’s Secret when dozens of shoppers – “too many to count,” Williams said – thundered toward them.

They ran with the crowd, they said, asking questions as they went.

Shots had been fired, they were told, and someone had been hit.

By the time they reached the parking lot, the first of dozens of squealing police cars were taking over the mall.

Minutes later, they stood in a light rain, holding hands, waiting for their ride, feeling lucky they hadn’t reached the mall any earlier.

“We feel blessed that we weren’t shot,” Biddle said. But he said the couple felt bad for the victim.

This story was originally published December 24, 2015 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Police kill teen gunman inside Charlotte mall."