Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Clackamas Mall Shooting: Three Dead

Breaking News UpdatesSee "Clackamas-Aurora Sync and Links" for more. Below is the original and initial December 11th details.



Some eyewitnesses reported the Clackamas shooter wore a "Jason" hockey mask.


On Tuesday, December 11, 2012, a shooting occurred at the Clackamas Town Center mall, near Portland, Oregon, leaving three dead. The mall attack began at around 3:20 p.m.


Specifically, the violence occurred in Clackamas, near the 20 screen multiplex Century movie theater, which is an anchor at the mall. It will be recalled that it was at a Century movie theater location where the Aurora, Colorado, shootings took place on July 20, 2012.

(Enki writes: "I checked, and the Century Clackamas Town Center and XD theater is playing Red Dawn.")
By 4:50 p.m., the shooter, wearing a white (camouflage) mask and a bulletproof vest, was "neutralized," according to the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department. The suspect is dead, along with two unidentified victims.

The shooter's cause of death appears to have been suicide, as at the law enforcement news conference at 6:30 p.m. Pacific, it was stated that police did not fire any weapons in the mall. By 6:45 p.m., CNN had confirmed the suspect died by suicide.
In the mall, over 20 shots were fired. Oregonian sports columnist John Canzano, who was pulling up to the mall when the shooting happened, said people reported hearing around 60 shots from the food court.


"It was kind of surreal because we hear pops and loud noises all the time because we're right here by the food court, but it's never been anything like that,” Evan Walters, a mall store employee, told KATU. “It was very definite gun shots. I think most all of us knew it was gunshots. There really was no rhyme or reason to them. There were many in a row."

Walters said he saw two people who had been shot and killed. Walters and other store employees brought out sheets from the store to place over the victims.

"Everyone's just trying to stick together and be as calm as possible for people ... I don't know what else to say,” Walters said. “It's just kind of scary. We're just trying to be as strong as we can and hopefully we'll be out of this as soon as possible."

Clackamas was named after the Upper Chinook group of Native peoples who use to live in the Clackamas river valley of northwestern Oregon. Their language is now extinct.
The Clackamas Town Center mall has some distinctive external art, as seen here. I am still attempting to discover the name of the artist.


Photos credit: KATU.

9 comments:

the jedi said...

just an update iam watching the local news here live right now 1 injured 3 dead including the shooter. he ran thru the macy's store and the second he hit the main hall he started shooting he was in all black with body armour on and a hockey mask (jason mask)

Anonymous said...

Obvious, I guess, but...
Clackamas = Christmas

Enki said...

The scene outside the mall's Century Theater looks eerily like what we saw outside Aurora's Century Theater on July 20.

I have noticed some oddities:

The Aurora tragedy happened 144 (12 X 12) days ago.

The Clackamas Town Center mall's website advertises a giveaway for tomorrow. 12 prizes will be given away on 12/12/12.

The mall is located minutes away from downtown Portland, where the primary shooting for Twilight took place.

The Clackamas Indians are the technical owners of the Willamette Meteorite, the largest meteorite ever found in North America. We are currently experiencing the Geminid meteor shower, due to peak in a couple of days.

The Century Theatres chain is owned by Cinemark, which is headquartered in Plano, Texas (which seems to come up quite a bit). The first Century theater was the Century 21 in San Jose, California. This theater was built next to the Winchester Mystery House, a location where the themes of madness and guns certainly intersected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Mystery_House

Loren Coleman said...

The Willamette Meteorite was discovered in the Willamette Valley of Oregon near the modern city of West Linn….The meteorite was apparently venerated by the Clackamas tribe inhabiting the area where it was found. The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, a confederation of Native American tribes, used the meteorite, which they call Tomanowos, in ceremonies and demanded that it be returned and filed a NAGPRA action (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) against the American Museum of Natural History in 1999. In response, the Museum filed a federal lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment against the Grand Ronde in 2000. An agreement with the Museum was reached later that year in which the meteorite would remain at the museum with tribal members being able to conduct a private ceremony around the meteorite once a year, and that ownership will be transferred to Grand Ronde should the museum cease to have the meteorite on display.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willamette_Meteorite#Modern_history

Cory Panshin said...

Enki's reference to the Winchester Mystery House jumped out at me, since I happened to have watched a YouTube video on it just a few days ago -- probably the first time I've even thought of the place since I read about it in one of the old paperback collections of Ripley's Believe It or Not when I was a kid. A strange house with a very strange vibe -- and quite literally built with blood money.

Anonymous said...

in the jason movie friday the 13th a new begining,that has been playing on the ifc channel all week? the killer jason is ahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th:_A_New_Beginningcopycat killer in this movie chek this out

Red Dirt Reporter said...

Particularly curious is that Portland, Oregon's alt-weekly - "Willamette Week" features a cover story about mentally-ill lawbreakers and "putting the right cop on the scene." I'm sure locals will see the headlines and then pick up their Willamette Week and put 2 and 2 together. Or maybe not.

Loren Coleman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ann said...

That mural at the Clackamas Town hall mall reminds me of the bizarre wall murals allegedly shown at the Denver Airport. I have asked several people that used that airport if they ever saw those murals. No one that I asked has. But the artist styles look similar: cubic and surreal, as if something has been shattered, like consciousness.