The Tacoma Mall Mad Man

(Recorded 2:26am - October 28, 2005)

 
In the early morning hours of Oct 28th, 2005, a mesmerizing vision came to me, yet again.

And there I was coming out of a supermarket.  I walked into a parking lot and found, to my utmost surprise, an unexpected scene of chaos unfolding.  The police SWAT team were dispersed everywhere. Evidently, they were there to neutralize a bizarre hostage situation that was in progress.

A mad man was apparently holding a newborn child captive. The baby was inside a stroller which the man towered over and used as protection so the officers wouldn't shoot at him.  From time to time, this man would make threatening gestures at the baby indicating to the officers that he was going to hurt the little infant if they didn't pander to him and back off.

Though the SWAT men had this individual fully surrounded with their laser beam guns each pointed at him, they nevertheless chose not to fire one shot.  I guess they did so out of concern for the baby.   Notwithstanding, the officers continued shouting orders at the mad man to step away from the stroller. He ignored the commands  and yelled right back. The officers didn't relent at all.  They kept up their authoritative tone of voice.

The back and forth shouting went on for a bit till I guess the crazed man became frustrated.

To make a point to the police officers, he bent over the stroller and made a gesture at the baby's neck, sort of insinuating that he was going to slit the newborn’s throat if they didn't shut up. 

This didn't seem to faze the officers at all.  They yelled at him again to surrender and finally, he snapped.  The relentless echo of thunderous squalling by the authority figures had taken a toll on him and now he was fed up.

I watched him jump quickly into an old SUV and started to shoot in every direction his gun could point at while at the same time driving through the parking lot.  Everyone was terrified. I would imagine a number of people might have gotten hit by the array of stray bullets but in this dream that specific detail wasn't shown to me.

One of the directions the mad man was shooting at happened to be the exact exit spot of the supermarket I had just emerged from.  This was worrisome.

Prior to this point, I had only been a curious spectator watching the whole thing unfold from a safe distance. But now, as he drove through the parking area still shooting aimlessly, I realized he was eventually going to come my way.

With the automatic gun in his left hand letting loose some serious hell and his right hand on the steering wheel, this guy simply didn't seem to care who got hit or where they got hit. He shot in every direction conceivable. 

Everyone that was around me ran for cover. I wanted to run too but common sense warned me otherwise. I knew I’d get hit if I attempted to flee given the proximity of the gunman’s approaching SUV to the place I was standing.

I was very nervous. I needed to do something and without more ado, I ducked down immediately and lied face flat on the ground just in time for the bullets to whiz past my body, missing me by just mere inches.

From the looks of things, the mad man appeared to be a man that was in the military because in this dream I noticed his attire was sort of out of place. He was dressed in an army fatigue like a normal military person. His actions however were mind-boggling. I got the distinct impression that he was mad about something. I don’t know what it was but in the dream it was made somewhat obvious to me that whoever was ruffling his waters might be the government.

On the exact night I had the dream I posted it up on an online message board just so the record is out there for future references.

A few weeks later, on the day of November 21st, while I was cruising through the top headlines on one of my favorite online news websites, I stumbled upon an article about an event that greatly resembled what I had seen in my vision.

The Headline of this article read “Six Hurt in Washington State Mall Gunfire”.  I pried in deeper and was a bit taken aback by the undeniable similarities between this news and the vision I was shown weeks earlier.
 

News Article (1) of the Dream:

Shooting at Tacoma Mall leaves 7 injured
 

Monday, November 21, 2005

Man fires on shoppers, takes hostages, then gives up

By JAKE ELLISON, CHRISTINE FREY AND ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

Full Coverage

TACOMA -- A routine day of shopping turned into a terrifying scene at the Tacoma Mall Sunday, witnesses said, when a young man in a shirt and tie opened fire with an assault rifle, then kept three people hostage for hours before surrendering to police.

At least seven people were injured -- one critically -- and the mall was locked down Sunday afternoon as frightened shoppers scrambled for safety.

Shortly before 4 p.m., the gunman came out of a Sam Goody record store without a gun and surrendered to a SWAT team, said Mark Fulghum, a spokesman for Tacoma police. The hostages -- two store employees and a customer -- were released unhurt. Dominick S. Maldonado, 20, was booked on six counts of assault and three counts of kidnapping and was being held on $450,000 bail, according to Pierce County jail records.

One of the hostages said late Sunday night that Maldonado was angry at police. He said the gunman told the hostages his name and age and said the reason he opened fire in the mall was because "some officer did him wrong when he was younger."

The hostage, Jon, was shopping in the Sam Goody store with his wife about 12:15 p.m. when they heard shots and hit the floor. Jon's wife was able to escape through the back door, but Jon stayed.

"It just didn't feel right to leave," said Jon, a 32-year-old who has been in the Army for 11 years and asked that his last name not be used. "Call me stupid, but don't call me a hero. I didn't know if I could do anything to help the situation, disarm him or something."

Maldonado rounded up him and two others at gunpoint, though he didn't constantly have his gun trained on them, Jon said.

He told Jon and assistant store manager Joe Hudson to arrange the shelves and display racks into a series of barricades, and then he sat in the back while Jon was put on a stool in the front as a lookout.

Jon spent most of the next several hours with his back to the gunman.

"Dying goes through your mind," he said. "You think about your family, that you'll probably never see them again and how they are holding up."

In the end, Jon said, Maldonado gave himself up.

"Me and Joe and Kathy (Riggans, the store's manager), we just kept talking to him and kept personalizing everything and kept making him understand that this was not the smartest thing to do," Jon said.

"It makes it a little harder to kill someone when you know them."

He said the gunman allowed them to make phone calls. He emphasized that the gunman did not make the hostages wear cowbells and that the gunman never slept, contrary to what had been reported on television.

Maldonado has a juvenile record dating back to 1998 that includes charges of burglary and theft, court records show. As part of a sentence in a 1998 case, he was prohibited from using or owning a firearm.

People inside the mall at the time of the shootings described a chaotic scene.

Kat Frossard, 18, of Tacoma said she was on her way to the Dairy Queen in the food court in front of J.C. Penney when she heard eight or nine "cracks" at about 12:15 p.m.

"Everyone started dropping, and the man next to me did a hard thud," she said, recounting the scene from outside the mall, across the street. "He hit the ground hard and grabbed his leg. He was like, 'Oh it burns, it burns, it hurts, it hurts.' Another man put a finger in the hole" to stop the bleeding.

Frossard hid behind a concrete planter when a second round of shots started. She took cover in the Abercrombie & Fitch store. She saw the shooter, a man with a gun in his right hand.

"I thought, 'I'm gonna die,' " Frossard said. "I thought it was a gang shooting, and then I thought, 'Is my family OK?' " -- referring to her friends, who were all accounted for. Police evacuated her, along with other shoppers.

At the Build-A-Bear Workshop near the Sam Goody, Brittany Hilstad, 18, a high school senior in Tacoma, was preparing for a birthday party when she heard one shot and then several more.

Hilstad took five children to the back of the store and into a hallway that connects the mall's tenants. Police and medics evacuated her and the children.

Jerry Rhodes III, a 17-year-old who said he was a member of the Army National Guard who lives in Tacoma, said he was in the Spencer's Gift Shop when he saw a man walk by shooting an assault rifle.

"He reloaded right in front of me and continued to walk down the hallway shooting his rifle," Rhodes said. "He was shooting at an upward angle. He was rather well-dressed for what he was doing -- a white dress shirt and black dress pants."

Rhodes helped a shellshocked woman and other customers in the store to the backroom, where he and eight others holed up for about two hours.

About 15 Tacoma fire units and 35 firefighters were at the scene to provide medical support.

State Patrol and police units from nearby agencies were clustered around an entrance at the Tacoma Mall's south end.

The mall was locked down with shoppers and store clerks still inside. An exit off Interstate 5 to the mall was closed.

Todd Kelley, spokesman for Tacoma General, said one shooting victim was in critical condition at the hospital. Six other victims were in satisfactory or better condition at other hospitals.

It was not clear whether all had been shot.

Hudson, 23, the assistant manager at Sam Goody's, was able to call his family while he was being held hostage, his father said.

Hudson called his mom at home and then made a second call to tell his family that he loved them, said his father, Robert Hudson.

Susan Serveau said her daughter, Kathy Riggans, 24, is a manager at Sam Goody. Serveau called her at the store when she heard shots had been fired at the mall.

"She was upset and scared. She was crying," Serveau said, standing in a parking lot across the street from the mall, crying and hugging her terrier, Dottie. "All she would say was that she was OK."

Reached at his home last night, the hostage Jon said he was trying to sort through the event.

"I've never gone through anything like this so I don't have anything to compare it to," he said.

"I guess I'm doing pretty good. I'm not hurt and I'm alive, so I'm doing really good."

News Article (2) of the Dream:

Six Hurt in Washington State Mall Gunfire 

Nov 21, 3:11 AM (ET)

By RACHEL LA CORTE

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - A gunman opened fire inside a busy shopping mall Sunday, wounding at least six people and taking three others hostage in a music store before he surrendered to a SWAT team, authorities said.

Witnesses described seeing a clean-cut man walking backward through the mall, firing a rifle. At least six people were injured, one critically, as shoppers and store clerks scrambled for cover.

Dominick Maldonado, 20, of Tacoma was booked into the Pierce County Jail on six counts of assault and three counts of kidnapping, according to jail records reported by The Seattle Times and the Tacoma News Tribune. He was being held on $450,000 bail.

Court records show he has an extensive juvenile criminal history dating back to 1998. He has been convicted of burglary, theft and possession of burglary tools and he had been ordered not to possess any weapons, the Times reported.

The suspect came out of the Sam Goody music store without a gun and surrendered to the SWAT team, Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum said. He said police were interviewing the victims and the three hostages - two men and a woman - to determine what happened during the nearly four hours he was inside.

While the suspect was in the music store, employee Joe Hudson was able to pick up a phone call from The Associated Press and say he and others had been taken hostage. He said little more but could be heard telling others that he was talking to the AP.

Susan Serveau said she also called her daughter, Kathy Riggans, 24, a manager at Sam Goody, as soon as she heard about the shooting.

"She was upset and scared. She was crying," Serveau said, standing in a parking lot near the mall. "All she would say was that she was OK."

Authorities said they began getting calls about 12:15 p.m. that shots had been fired inside the Tacoma Mall. The first caller said a gunman "was in the mall, walking along, firing," Fulghum said.

State Patrol and police units from nearby agencies clustered around an entrance at the south end.

Inside, Stacy Wilson, 29, of Bonney Lake, heard a popping noise and turned around.

"I saw the gunman randomly shooting. I ran with a group of women to Victoria's Secret," Wilson said. She said they crouched behind a wall in the store, and when the shooting stopped, an employee ran out and closed a security gate at the front.

Wilson said she heard 15 to 20 shots.

"He was walking backward and shooting. I couldn't see his face," she said. "Everyone was running and screaming."

A man told KING-TV the gunman was smiling as he fired an assault rifle in bursts of four to five shots.

The man said he told his daughter and grandson to run and then hid in the back of a store with his wife and granddaughter. He says they helped a woman who was shot in the leg, bandaging the wound and wrapping her in blankets.

A woman who said she made eye contact with the "very clean-cut" gunman before he opened fire told Northwest Cable News, "When I heard the shooting I thought, 'This is a joke. ... I couldn't believe this was actually happening, that someone would do this."

Betz Dejarnatt, who works at the J.C. Penney store, said workers were herded into dressing rooms and offices, then police took them outside to a parking lot.

Six people were taken to hospitals, most with minor injuries, according to Tacoma Fire Department Deputy Chief Jon Lendosky. One person was in critical condition at Tacoma General Hospital, spokesman Todd Kelley said.