A shooting took place at the Garden State Plaza Mall in Paramus, New Jersey around 9:30 pm on Monday, November 4, when the mall was about to close.
Twenty-year-old Richard Shoop came into the mall with a semi-automatic weapon and began shooting in the air, leading to chaos and a lockdown of the mall. People in the nearby neighborhoods were asked to stay inside their homes until the standoff ended Tuesday morning with Shoop’s suicide. No one else was injured in the incident.
Youngha Kim, a student at Paramus High School, lives in a neighborhood close to the mall and shared her experience with JSR during the tense hours before the incident ended.
She stated, “Right now is about 10:57 pm here in New Jersey, which is about an hour and a half past the shooting, but we still hear the helicopters and police sirens that are looking for the criminal,” said Kim. “My friends and I left the mall only about 30 minutes before the shooting started.”
According to Kim, the shooting caused shock but also brought members of the community together.
“My friends and I that live near the mall are staying together right now because we are really scared,” she said during the event. “We never expected a shooting like this to happen in our community.”
