Scores of police officers descended on a mall in Riverside, Calif., after terrified shoppers and workers reported gunfire in the building, but the noise turned out to be breaking glass, a sign of the anxiety in Southern California in the days after a deadly terrorist attack in nearby San Bernardino.
Reports of a shooting in the Galleria at Tyler mall began to emerge shortly after 6:30 p.m., when three men entered a jewelry store and smashed glass display cases to grab the jewels kept inside, the Riverside Police Department said.
The sound of pounding sledge hammers and shattering glass sent a wave of panic through the mall as shoppers and mall employees, on edge after a terrorist attack linked to the Islamic State killed 14 people in San Bernardino last week, assumed the noises were gun shots.
"The first thing that went through my mind was, 'Oh, God, we're under terrorist attack,'" Erica Muschara, 28, who was in a cosmetics store at the mall, told The Los Angeles Times. "Everyone was screaming and running." |