On June 3rd a shooting took place at the Eaton Centre, the largest downtown shopping mall in Toronto. The incident, which occurred in the food court, killed one person and injured six others. Pandemonium ensued as all the people in the place took cover or fled. Imagine for a moment walking peacefully along one of the streets boarding the Eaton Centre and to suddenly see hundred of terrified people pouring out of the doors and screaming in terror.
One of the people who escaped the mall on that day was Toronto Blue Jay third baseman Brett Lawrie. This is what he tweeted to his more than 125, 000 followers:
“pretty sure someone just let off a round of bullets in the eaton center mall…Wow just sprinted out of the mall…Through traffic…”
“ People sprinting up the stairs right from where we just were…Wow wow wow”
These are some other eyewitness reports:
“Everybody panicked and ran as fast as they could. We sprinted up the escalator and people were falling on top of one another and I was very scared I was going to get trampled or shot in the back. It felt like America not Canada.”
“My wife jumped on our kids and protected them. She pulled my youngest out of the stroller and laid herself out beside her. She sang songs to her and pulled out her breast so as to comfort her. It was an amazing and beautiful thing to do. She’s a hero.”
“I knew something was wrong when I heard two different groups of people screaming and crying as they ran past. I was frozen, not knowing what to do. An Asian woman stopped to tell me what had happened. She had a tattoo of a man standing in front of a tank on her wrist, and when I saw it I knew it must have been inspired by Tiananmen Square, and I wondered if I was feeling the same sort of terror that they felt on that day. I was still stunned, but the woman tugged me on the shoulder and then I began to run, too
“ When I heard the shots and all the yelling I couldn’t help thinking that it was my mother’s birthday. I just kept saying, “I can’t die on my mother’s birthday, I can’t die on my mother’s birthday,” and I just ran with the mob until I hit the street.”
“Ever since I was a child and I saw the Columbine shooting on TV, I’ve had recurring nightmares about this sort of thing. I’d always been waiting for it to happen, I guess, and there it was, happening. I should have been scared, but I wasn’t, I was calm, thinking that I had a role to play and had been summoned by God to be present on this day.”
“I’d just bought a new high definition TV and I didn’t want to drop it. I worried about people running over it. But I did drop it and then I ran like hell.”
“Me and my friends come down to hangout at the food court all the time. There’s a girl who works at the Dairy Queen I’ve always wanted to talk to, but she’s so pretty I get too nervous. When the shooting started I thought of her. I didn’t want her to be scared. I wanted to save her, but everything happened so quickly that I don’t even remember running. Suddenly I was standing outside on the street and I knew right then that I wanted to marry her. I hope to tell our grandchildren that story one day.”
