One person was injured and two people were taken into custody after a shooting at Ottawa's Tanger Outlets shopping centre Friday afternoon.

Ottawa police, who were called to the centre at about 3:45 p.m. ET, said the male victim suffered a "very minimal" injury and was taken to hospital.

Duty Insp. Mark Patterson says two people were taken into custody and investigators from the guns and gangs unit were interviewing witnesses as they searched for two more people.

Ottawa police Duty Insp. Mark Patterson says one person suffered a "very minimal" injury from what they believe was a single gunshot. (CBC) He said police are checking vehicles as they leave and doing grid searches as part of the investigation.

Management closed stores around 6 p.m. "in support of and out of compassion for the employees currently working," according to police.

No vehicles are being allowed in, but parents wishing to get their children can use the west entrance.

A post on the mall's website says they will be open for regular business hours starting 9:30 a.m. Saturday.

Police said a single shot was fired outside, and an employee at the shopping centre's Adidas outlet told CBC News it happened in front of that store.

Greg Richardson, who said he was inside the mall's Ralph Lauren store, heard "a loud short bang that we didn't immediately identify as a shot, we thought maybe a display had fallen over.

"Very shortly thereafter people were running … away from the windows, running to the back, they were telling everyone (to) get to the back of the store, get to the fitting rooms, there'd been an issue."

Ottawa police officers check the Tanger Outlets parking lot after a single shot was fired on Boxing Day afternoon. (Lori Currie/Twitter) "Initially there was a lot of panic and people were running, after a few minutes it seemed to calm down," said Samantha Soucy, who was shopping in another store at the time and didn't hear the shot.

Mall management said they kept people inside shops and other buildings just after the shooting as part of their emergency plan.​

"For about 45 minutes or so we weren't allowed to leave," Soucy said.

Tanger Outlets opened in October in west Ottawa, just across the highway from the Canadian Tire Centre.

The incident comes on Boxing Day, one of the busiest shopping days of the year.