19-Year-Old Killed in Mall of America Shooting, Sending Shoppers into Lockdown

A 19-year-old man was shot and killed during a shooting at the Mall of America just two days before Christmas.

On Friday night, the Bloomington, Minn. Police Department told multiple outlets that officers in the area heard gunshots on the first floor of the Mall of America’s Nordstrom store just before 8 p.m. local time.

When officers arrived on the scene, they found one male had been shot multiple times and a bystander’s jacket had been grazed by a bullet, Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges told CNN and the Associated Press during a Friday night news conference.

The police chief said the shooting happened after an altercation between a group of five to nine people escalated, adding that the shooting itself lasted 30 seconds, multiple outlets reported.

“We are going to catch you, we are going to lock you up and you are going to get an orange jumpsuit,” Hodges said Friday as he asked that those involved in the shooting come forward, according to the AP. “It’s just a matter of when it’s going to happen.”

“If anybody helps these people — I mean so much as buy them a Happy Meal, give them a ride, we’re going to lock you up with them,” the chief added.

The Bloomington Police Department did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment Saturday regarding Friday night’s shooting.

A lockdown was put in place at the mall after the shooting until about 9:10 p.m. local time Friday, at which point the shopping center announced on Twitter that all guests should leave and that it would close for the night. As of Friday night, the mall was expected to reopen Saturday for Christmas Eve, though the Nordstrom store itself will reportedly remain closed.

The NFL’s New York Giants’ communication team told the AP on Friday that they believed some of the team’s players were at the Mall of America during the time of Friday’s shooting, since the Giants are in Minnesota to play the Vikings on Saturday afternoon.

“Everyone is back in the hotel and accounted for now,” Giants executive vice president of communications Pat Hanlon told the AP Friday night.

In August, the Mall of America experienced a similar incident when shots were fired at a Nike store in the shopping center, sending groups of shoppers fleeing in a panic, though nobody was killed

On Saturday morning, the Bloomington Police Department wrote on Twitter that it will hold a press conference on the shooting at 5 p.m. local time.