Three armed youths remain on the run after a busy shopping centre was plunged into lockdown following reports of the teens chasing another group through the centre.
Westfield Marion in Adelaide, South Australia, was evacuated at 2:52pm on Sunday after three boys allegedly armed with ‘expandable batons’ tried to attack another group in the food court.
The armed teens remained at large on Sunday night after police urged the trio to hand themselves in.
Video circulating on social media of the incident showed heavily armed police storm the centre as siren blared through Westfield and shoppers ran for their lives from the scene.
South Australian Police Assistant Commissioner Scott Duval said shoppers inside the centre were able to leave shortly after 5pm once police had declared the area safe.
Assistant Commissioner Duval told reporters that CCTV footage showed three Caucasian boys with extendable batons and possibly a knife.
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‘I have looked at the CCTV [and] this involves three youth and I will call them boys under 18 years, of Caucasian appearance, they approached another group of boys and an altercation occurred,’ he said.
‘Expandable batons are seen and at this stage we cannot discount any other weapons but we have reports that a knife may be involved.
‘We are not clear on the intention of that at this stage but I stress it does not appear to be a random attack, and it does not appear that the three boys were intending on targeting anyone else in the centre.
‘While they were in an altercation with people they may have known, they have majorly inconvenienced everyone else.
He issued a public plea to the teens to hand themselves in.
He was confident that the boys would be found but encouraged anyone with additional information to come forward.
‘They need to understand the consequences of their actions,’ Assistant Commissioner Duval said.
Paramedics at the scene treated a women in her 70s with a shoulder injury and a person in their 30s with a knee injury.
Both are believed to have been injured during the evacuation.
Neither had life-threatening injuries and one was transported to Flinders Medical Centre.
By the time police arrived at the shopping centre it had already entered into lockdown.
‘As a result of the incident, centre management activated an audible alert and evacuation alarm, and the centre went into lockdown,’ a police spokesperson said.
‘Numerous police resources including STAR Group officers attended the centre to commence a search for the groups involved in the initial disturbance.’
Authorities have since erected fences around the shopping centre and asked members of the public to stay away.
Other footage posted to social media showed shopper and store staff in locked down in the Target staffroom.
A photo from the scene showed a billboard warning: ‘Armed Offender: Escape, Hide, Tell’.
People who were inside the shopping centre at the time of the evacuation posted about the experience online.
Numerous stores, including Woolworths and Rebel Sport, immediately shuttered their doors on the alert to keep shoppers safe.
Chloe Andrews posted to social media from inside a locked up Kmart stock room.
‘I came to Marion to buy a new bin, and it’s ended with myself and like 200 other people in Kmart’s stock room as there is someone armed with a weapon in Marion,’ she said.
‘So anyone thinking of heading this way…just don’t. I’m petrified.’
One shopper, writing to social media, said the scene turned into ‘absolute bedlam’ after the alert sounded.
‘The alert was so quiet and took until the 3rd one to realise,’ she said.
‘We were in the movies with the two kids and it wasn’t until the third one she said weapon David Jones and so shook up.
‘We ran out the fire escape as one of the first from the whole cinemas and were left to find an escape. Just opening doors to find which one gets to the carport.’
Another shopper claimed the incident had unfolded on the second floor of the store and saw a security guard run up the escalator from level one.
‘The staff were great but people were certainly panicked and running to all the exits,’ they said.
A third had also been shopping in David Jones when they heard a voice over the speaker system announce ‘this in an emergency’.
‘Then we heard it again and we’ve never heard that type of thing, next minute the David Jones security doors went down,’ they told 9News.
Movies being shown in a nearby cinema were immediately stopped and the patrons evacuated.
One woman told the ABC: ‘We were in the movies watching a movie and we just heard … something saying “emergency” for 10 minutes and nobody really knew what it was, if it was a phone or something.
‘[Then] someone went out of the movies at all of a sudden everyone just came running in a just sprinting incoming yelling “run, run!” And we … started sprinting towards the emergency exit.
‘We hid behind the seats. We had no idea it was a drill or something was happening.’
Another shopper, Wendy, told the publication that she was in Woolworths when the store’s shutters closed after the first emergency announcement.
‘It was all pretty fast, the shutters came down really quickly, I didn’t even realise they were coming down because I was at the check-out and next thing I look up and the whole store was shut,’ she said.
Westfield Marion is owned by Scentre Group, same company that runs Westfield Bondi, the scene of a horrific mass murder event in April.
In a statement, the company said the centre would remain closed on Sunday, but would reopen for trade on Monday.
‘The safety of our customers, business partners and people is our highest priority,’ a Westfield Marion spokesman said.
‘Our team have been providing their full support to SA Police this afternoon who attended an incident at Westfield Marion. For a brief period SA Police were in full control of the site.
‘Please note, Westfield Marion closed at 5pm today, in line with normal trading hours, and will re-open for trade as normal tomorrow.’
Westfield Marion is a major shopping hub in the city’s southern suburbs, about 12km from the CBD.
It is one of South Australia’s largest shopping centres and it contains more than 340 stores.
Police conducted an active armed offender training drill at the centre in mid June.
Assistant Commissioner Duval said that the drill was effective and helped specialist police in evacuating the shopping centre on Sunday.