Racquel Lee was just looking to “have some me time” when a casual afternoon of shopping turned into a nightmare.
Lee was among many who sheltered in place at the Allen Premium Outlets mall in Allen, Texas, on Saturday as a gunman opened fire, killing eight and wounding seven others.
Lee shared her experience with Texas News and also on social media, where she posted a firsthand account of the shooting on Instagram, alongside videos of herself and a group of 12 others hiding in a bathroom closet at the mall.
Lee, a mother of two, said she was merely making an impromptu stop at the mall after attending a baby shower in nearby McKinney when the shooting began.
“Screams, cries, saw a lady get gunned down running past our window,” she recalled in a detailed post one day after the shooting.
![People hug as they visit the memorial next to the Allen Premium Outlets on May 7, 2023 in Allen, Texas. The memorial is for the victims of the May 6th mass shooting in the Allen Premium Outlets mall. According to reports, a shooter opened fire at the outlet mall, killing eight people. The gunman was then killed by an Allen Police officer that was responding to an unrelated call.](https://people.com/thmb/Nc_fv1eqLxrdooi6qN7hmapfc1o=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(939x505:941x507):format(webp)/texas-mall-shooting-050823-4-e286de57445a480db94f4477e9ec4443.jpg)
The gunman, who authorities identified as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia, drove up to the east side of the mall and began firing at shoppers outside of an H&M store.
“It sounded like a war zone,” Lee told Press. “It was horrifying and it felt like you were in a dream.”
A store associate had detoured Lee from going back to her car, she wrote on Instagram. Her car was parked outside the same H&M store where the shooting began. Instead, the worker hurried Lee and a dozen others into a nearby closet where they stayed throughout the shooting, “trying not to be heard, crying, praying.”
“I remember thinking that he’s coming in here next, and I was hoping we didn’t get hit by a bullet,” Lee told . “Then the store associate saved our lives.”
Lee said she and the others later walked past bodies as police escorted the group out of the mall. One of those bodies belonged to the store associate who had ushered them to safety.
“I was right at the epicenter and can’t unsee or unlive yesterday,” Lee wrote online Sunday.
![Emergency vehicles line the entrance to the Allen Premium Outlets where a shooting took place on May 6, 2023 in Allen, Texas. According to reports, a shooter opened fire at the outlet mall, injuring at least nine people who were taken to local hospitals. The police have confirmed there were fatalities but have not specified how many. The unidentified shooter was neutralized by an Allen Police officer responding to an unrelated call.](https://people.com/thmb/N1yqFrqTc2g4fH43X3ehWmNE9go=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(979x438:981x440):format(webp)/texas-mall-shooting-050823-1-78fea1b918c24a55a63d577ad8f67a63.jpg)
![May 7, 2023 (Xinhua) - This photo taken on May 6, 2023 shows a police car near the shooting site of Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, a suburban city of Dallas, Texas, the United States. Nine people were killed, including the shooter, and seven injured in a shooting at an outlet mall on Saturday afternoon in south-central U.S. state Texas, authorities said. The shooter, who authorities believed was acting alone, was dead at the scene, according to the Collin County Sheriff's Office. U.S. Texas Dallas Shooting - 06 May 2023](https://people.com/thmb/x-oN2Nq9nwbniKDSvoo39nXYPg4=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(1039x452:1041x454):format(webp)/texas-mall-shooting-050823-2-2000-ee1ebf1e90764dcf8dea6703d56dfa79.jpg)
The killings marked the 202nd mass shooting in the United States this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, an organization that tracks gun violence around the country. The GVA defines mass shootings as any gun-related incident in which four or more people are shot or killed.
“Such an attack is too shocking to be so familiar,” President Joe Biden said in a statement afterwards, adding that “the leading cause of death for American kids is gun violence.”
Allen Police Chief Brian Harvey told reporters Saturday that a police officer who was on an unrelated call at the mall heard gunshots at about 3:36 p.m. before locating the gunman and killing him.
Investigators are now reportedly looking into whether the gunman held neo-Nazi and white supremacist beliefs and whether those possible beliefs were related to Saturday’s shooting.