Police in Fairfield, California, identified the dead victim Saturday in a mass shooting Friday at a Spirit Halloween store. Six others were injured.
The Fairfield Police Department said on social media that the shooting, which took place at around 8:30 p.m. local time Friday, “is believed to have stemmed from a targeted incident involving one suspect inside the Spirit Halloween store.”
In a subsequent post, police identified the deceased victim as Constance Hages, a 31-year-old who was pregnant at the time of her death. There are four victims still in critical condition: a 16-year-old boy and three men ages 19, 23 and 32.
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Two other victims, a 19-year-old man and a 43-year-old man, were treated for their gunshot wounds and have been released from the hospital, the police said Saturday. The police have not publicly identified any of the victims who were injured.
Witness Javier Espinoza, who was at the store with his girlfriend at the time of the attack, told the San Francisco Chronicle that they at first heard a muffled sound they thought was fireworks before realizing it was gunfire, and that the sound got louder as the shooting continued into the store.
Mr. Espinoza told the paper that he, his girlfriend and a third shopper managed to lift up a security barrier separating the store from the mall where it was located before rolling under and escaping the scene.
Another witness, Miena Davis, told KCRA-TV she started hearing the gunshots shortly after entering the Spirit Halloween store.
“Everything froze and was, like, ‘What was that?’ And then another round of the same sound went off, and then a bunch of shoppers started running. It was immediate panic. You heard a mom crying out for their child. And it just was so surreal,” Ms. Davis told KCRA-TV.
The police are still working on identifying and apprehending the suspect and have not said who or what they were targeting in the attack or what other motive they could have had.
The Solano Town Center, where the Spirit Halloween store is located, canceled its trick-or-treating event scheduled for Saturday in light of the shooting, according to The Associated Press.
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