Police capture gunman in US mall shooting
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 Harbor, saying he was
arrested late Saturday about 24 hours after the killings.
The FBI office in Seattle said it had no evidence the shooting was terror-related.
The gunman opened fire with a rifle in
the makeup section of a Macy’s department store late Friday, 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, Cascade Mall in Burlington, a town of about 8,000 people
some 70 miles (110 kilometers) 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.
Details emerge on gunman
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 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 went to Oak Harbor 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.
YouTube users posted lewd comments on that page and Cetin’s Twitter page in response to the mall shooting.
Police said Cetin had one prior arrest, last year, for assault.
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