BY ELIZABETH EDNIE
It was supposed to be a carefree shopping day. Instead, Saturday, January 22 was a frightening day for me and my five friends. My friends and I decided early in the day to go shopping at the South Shore Plaza in Braintree. We had nothing else to do since it was the first week of a new semester.
We were on our way to the food court after popping into a couple stores when we saw a police officer armed with a large gun running in the opposite direction, yelling at everyone to get out of the way and to get into a safe place.
All I could think of was the worst; my heart was racing. Thankfully, I wasn’t in this situation alone. My friend Nicole is a dispatcher for the town of Salisbury who stayed calm the whole time, and with the help of her uncle who is a retired Massachusetts State Police Officer, helped keep my friends and I all safe.
After we saw the officer running with what I assumed to be an assault rifle toward the other end of the mall, we quickly found a store and crouched down behind a rack of clothes by the counter. In those initial minutes, we had no idea what was happening, but we soon realized through the nature of the situation, that we needed to get into a safer place. Nicole motioned to us to come back to the storage area of the store where a mother and her two young children were hiding, when she called her uncle. After we made our way to the back, my friend Megan found a bathroom with a lock on it, where we all entered and stayed inside until police came to the door about 15 minutes later saying it was safe.
While on the phone with her uncle, Nicole was listening to his directions. He told us to barricade the door with anything that was in the bathroom, and to not open the door to anyone. We found a folding chair that did not hit high enough to successfully block the door handle, but a Swifer Sweeper in the corner came in handy as we propped it up across the wooden door frame. Her uncle also told us that it might be helpful for one of us to lay on the floor with our feet up, so if anyone does enter the bathroom, that person can kick the shooter, potentially knocking the weapon out of their hands. At the end of the day, from our experiences doing active shooting drills in school, we all knew that we needed to remain silent, barricade the door if possible and not open it for anyone. It was great that we actually had someone walking us through these steps which helped us all remain as calm as possible.
While we were locked inside the six by six bathroom, a man who said he was the owner tried multiple times to get us to leave the bathroom, saying that he needed to lock up the store and leave because that was what police were supposedly saying. We knew not to open the door, but he kept jiggling the door insisting that we leave. He did it at least five different times. That made us even more scared and anxious. We now understand why he was acting that way, but the things he was saying while jiggling the door handle made us feel even worse about the situation. Nicole’s uncle was on speakerphone, and heard the store owner trying to get us to leave. Her uncle kept repeating the phrase, “do not open that door.”
After about 15 minutes of being in the bathroom, the police finally came to the door and we felt safe enough to open it. Their voices felt trustworthy. As we stepped out, we saw a couple of local cops and a couple of state cops, all making sure we were okay. We kept thanking them. I started to tear up and a couple of my friends were crying. We were crying tears of relief, feeling grateful nothing happened to us. The cops assured us that everything was okay, and escorted us through the empty mall to the outdoor parking garage. After we found the car, we were able to finally relax a bit, think back and talk it through. We are all thankful we were together and are able to talk about it after the fact. It made me feel grateful for my friends, and this situation definitely brought us closer.
While we were locked in the bathroom, one of my friends searched on Twitter for updates on what was going on. According to Twitter accounts, the shooting supposedly happened at the Forever 21 at the end of the mall. This Forever 21 was two stories, and was the first store we went to after getting to the mall. We all took a group photo in one of the full body mirrors before going into the next store.
We spent time less than an hour before the shooting, shopping and looking around. After finding out from Twitter that the shooting happened in a store we were in thirty minutes earlier, we believed we had angels looking out for us. If we had gotten to this mall thirty minutes later than we did, we might have been in that store at the time of the shooting.
Hours later, most of us are feeling better and glad we have each other to talk about what happened to heal from the experience. It’s safe to say that my friends and I probably won’t ever go to the Braintree mall again, or a large venue or mall by ourselves.