LOS ANGELES: Authorities have arrested a Turkish-born man suspected of shooting five people dead, including a teenaged cancer survivor, at a shopping mall in the US state of Washington.
Police named the suspect as Arcan Cetin, a 20-year-old resident of the nearby town of Oak Harbour, saying he was arrested late on Saturday about 24 hours after the killings.
The gunman opened fire with a rifle in the makeup section of a Macy’s department store, killing four women and a man, according to police. He later left the store on foot, triggering an intense manhunt.
A weapon was recovered at the scene of the violence, the Cascade Mall in Burlington, a town of about 8,000 people some 110km north of Seattle.
Police are still trying to establish a motive.
The youngest victim was named as Sarai Lara, 16, who survived cancer as a young girl. Relatives named another victim as 52-year-old Shayla Martin, who worked as a Macy’s makeup artist.
“We’re really having a tough time right now,” her sister Karen Van Horn told The Seattle Times.
Authorities had initially described the suspect as a Hispanic man in his late teens or early 20s.
Members of the public called in with numerous tips that helped lead to the arrest, police said, adding that Cetin’s family was cooperating.
While Cetin was born in Turkey, he is a legal permanent resident of the United States, said Lieutenant Chris Cammock, criminal investigations chief for the Mount Vernon Police Department.
He is due in court on Monday.
A Facebook page that appeared to belong to Cetin — and which has since been taken down — said he was born in the southern Turkish city of Adana. It also said he went to the Oak Harbour High School, which is about a 30-mile drive from Burlington, and had worked at a grocery store on nearby Whidbey Island.
In February, he posted a link to a “Call of Duty” first-person shooter videogame practice session, in an eerie foreshadowing of the real world violence he is suspected of perpetrating.
Police said Cetin had one prior arrest, last year, for assault.
It was the latest chapter in America’s epidemic of gun violence.
Burlington Mayor Steve Sexton’s voice trembled as he noted that the randomness of gun violence in America — which causes an estimated 30,000 deaths a year — had hit his small town.
“We suffered a devastating loss of five treasured members of our community who had done nothing more than what we all would have done on any given day: gone to the shopping mall,” he said.
“It changed those families forever. And we keep them in our prayers. It changed our community, I’m afraid, forever.”
The shooting came amid fierce debate in America over gun control laws. It is a hot issue on the campaign trail ahead of the November 8 presidential election.
“We are united in knowing that the status quo is not good enough when it comes to violence in our community,” said Washington Governor Jay Inslee.
Published in Dawn September 26th, 2016
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