Police say three people are dead, including the gunman, after a shooting at a shopping mall in suburban Portland, Oregon.
Clackamas County sheriff's Lt. James Rhodes says the gunman fatally shot two people, and wounded at least one other person at the Clackamas Town Center mall Tuesday afternoon. Rhodes confirms the gunman is dead but he did not say how he died.
Hundreds of holiday shoppers and store workers fled for their lives when the shots rang out.
Paul Beckett works at Excalibur Cutlery & Gifts in the mall. He says everything happened suddenly. "We heard a lot of gun shots out front," he says. "Some of the glass railing in front of my store shattered. A couple of windows in some of the other shops shattered. And people started running around and screaming. They weren't that scared at first. But suddenly people started ducking into places and diving on the ground and hiding. The security guards for the mall came around to tell everybody to just go in your store and close up the front of the stores."
Beckett says he saw half a dozen SWAT team members come in. When OPB Radio spoke to him, he was in his store, on the ground hiding in the back.
The Clackamas County Sheriff's Department says it does not have a motive for the shooter at this time.
Copyright 2012 Oregon Public Broadcasting