More than 12 hours after a gunman fatally shot four women and one man in a Washington state mall, police released a grainy image of the suspect and appealed to the public for any information about his identity, whereabouts and motive.

The gunman shot five people with a rifle around 7:30pm Friday evening, at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington, roughly an hour drive from Seattle. He walked into the mall without a gun, police said, but about 10 minutes later appeared in a Macy’s department store and opened fire.

He then left the building, reportedly toward a nearby interstate, although on Saturday police would not confirm this account. The suspect has been missing since, despite a 200-officer response from 26 agencies in the area.

“We do not have an identity on the individual yet, and we could certainly use the community’s help with that,” said Lieutenant Chris Cammock, an officer in the Mount Vernon police department.

Security still. Photograph: HANDOUT/Reuters

The suspect, Cammock said, “appears to be a male, probably late teens, early 20s”. He wore black shorts and “appears to be a little bit darker complected”, he added. Cammock said that police had recovered a weapon from the scene.

“I don’t know what his motivation was to do this, I don’t know what his motivation was to continue, I don’t know what his motivation was to stop, but I certainly intend to find out.”

A multi-agency team is leading the investigation, and Cammock said police are “basically reconstructing the entire scene, and what that involves is photographing, videoing,” and collecting, “latent prints, DNA, and anything that we can do to put the scene back together.”

Police have not released the identities of any of the victims in the attack. The county coroner said she still has not received the bodies of victims, and police have not informed next of kin. The victims ranged in age from a teenager to seniors, police said.

“There are people waking up this morning whose worlds are changed forever, the city of Burlington has probably changed forever,” mayor Steve Sexton said. “This is a senseless act, it was the world knocking on our doorstep and it came to our little community here.”

Sexton urged people to help police with any information they might have. “Our support goes to them to extend the long arm of the law to help get that son of a bitch who did this to our community.”

As of Saturday morning, police were still relying on grainy surveillance footage to identify the shooter, Cammock said. The public had provided some tips about the shooting, but police did not share the details of how many leads they had received, or their credibility.

Police declined to comment on many aspects of the investigation, and said it was too “preliminary” to share any findings.

Reports that the suspect was a Hispanic male were likely drawn from the first image released of the gunman, Cammock said, cautioning that he police could not yet identify the man. A FBI agent from the Seattle field office said “there’s no evidence at this time” to indicate an act of terrorism.

Skagit County DEM (@SkagitDEM) If anyone has information about the #CascadeMallShooting suspect, please call police 360-428-3211 or scinv@co.skagit.wa.us pic.twitter.com/uN6a5AYixd









The mall parking lot was still closed on Saturday and emergency management officials told people they would be able to retrieve vehicles later that day, though the mall said it would remain closed.



Authorities initially reported four people were killed, then said three were dead, before revising the number again. Police spokesman Mark Francis said the number fluctuated as authorities searched the shopping centre. A male victim who was critically wounded in the shooting died early on Saturday at a Seattle hospital.

A witness, Tari Caswell, told the Skagit Valley Herald she was in the Macy’s women’s dressing room when she heard “what sounded like four balloons popping.”

“Then I heard seven or eight more,” she said, “and I just stayed quiet in the dressing room because it just didn’t feel right. And it got very quiet. And then I heard a lady yelling for help, and a man came and got me and another lady, and we ran out of the store.”

Stephanie Bose, an assistant general manager at Johnny Carino’s Italian restaurant near the Macy’s store, said she immediately locked the doors to the restaurant after hearing about the shooting from an employee’s boyfriend.



“He was trying to go to the mall and people were screaming,” she said. “It was frantic.”

She said he could see police at the doors with assault rifles, who were no longer guarding the doors as of 9.30 pm.

Washington governor Jay Inslee said in a statement that many questions remained but state patrol and local law enforcement were on the scene working swiftly to locate the shooter and clear the area.



“Trudi and I send our condolences to the families of the victims and prayers for anyone injured,” he said. “We urge residents to heed all safety and detour warnings. Stay close to your friends and loved ones as we await more information and, hopefully, news of the suspect’s capture.”

The Cascade mall is an enclosed shopping mall in Burlington, Washington, that opened in 1990, according to the mall’s website. It features JC Penney, TJ Maxx and Macy’s stores, among others, restaurants and a movie theater.

The shooting comes less than a week after a man stabbed nine people at a mall in central Minnesota, before being shot dead by an off-duty police officer.