George Sliker, Tyler Johnson’s uncle by marriage, said Johnson’s family members saw news of the mall shooting Saturday and tried frantically to reach the young man, who they knew worked at Zumiez.

When they couldn’t get hold of him, Sliker said, they started calling hospitals. When that failed, he said, they went to the mall.

“The odds keep narrowing. They couldn’t get anybody to tell them anything,” said Sliker, 67, whose wife’s brother is Johnson’s father. “It was horrible for them. You just get a sense for it, I guess.”

Sliker, of Upper Marlboro, said he did not know Johnson well himself, seeing him mostly at family holiday parties. But at those, Sliker said, Johnson was polite and upbeat.

“Everything was going fine,” Sliker said. “He’s a likeable kid.”

Sliker said Johnson grew up in Ellicott City, though his immediate family now lives in Mount Airy. He said that as far as he knows, no one knew why Johnson had been shot.

“It’s very hard on the family, of course, mostly because I’m not sure anybody knows what happened,” he said. “He just seemed like an ordinary kid who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

— Matt Zapotosky