Police say one person was in custody after a vehicle drove into Woodfield Mall and was seen on social media smashing displays in the mall Friday afternoon.
There was “no evidence of an active shooter situation,” according to a statement from Schaumburg police.
“At this time, no injuries have been reported,” police said.
Some video and photos from the scene appeared to show authorities escorting someone wearing a long-sleeve red shirt from the mall, with the person’s hands behind their back.
Schaumburg police and fire officials were at the scene, as were FBI officials and officials from the Cook County Sheriff’s office, who were assisting local officials.
“The FBI is aware of the situation at Woodfield Mall and is assisting at the request of local law enforcement,” according to a statement from the Chicago office of the FBI. “There is no known threat to public safety at this time.”
In the video shared on twitter, someone shouts “This is not happening right now,” as the SUV drives through the mall near a Forever 21 store, smashing a display in the middle of the mall as people run after the SUV. The SUV then appears to smash into a store.
“Oh my God,” the person says.
Warning: This video contains graphic language:
Overhead video of the scene showed an entrance to the mall smashed, glass lying on the ground, leaving a hole large enough for a car to have traveled through.
In another video, showing smashed windows at a mall entrance, one person says “Oh my goodness,” and another says the driver “went all the way through ... through the mall.”
Bob Thomas, a Chicago Tribune executive, was headed to the Apple store to get his phone fixed. He went through the Macy’s store and was headed toward the main mall when the fire alarm went off.
"The loudspeaker kept saying there's been an incident in the building. They said please leave as soon as possible," Thomas said. "There was no security staff telling people to do anything."
He left Macy’s and went into the main mall, where he didn’t hear any alarms. He thought it was all a false alarm and kept walking. But then he heard someone say they were evacuating the mall.
“It was kind of chaotic.”
"A guy in the Apple store said, 'They're reporting a car driving through the first floor,' " Thomas said.
He headed back to Macy’s.
“I got to the center of the mall, I saw this car. It’s a black SUV crashed against a pillar in front of Clark’s shoe store. The front tire was flat. Two firemen were walking around it.” He took a picture and "all of a sudden the tact team came in with assault rifles and yelling, “Get out, get out, get out of the mall.”
On his way out, he saw police walking a man through the smashed doors of the Sears store. He was in his 20s, stocky, dressed in a red shirt and was in handcuffs. “He looked pretty calm,” Thomas said. Then he saw “line after line of police pouring into the parking lot.”
Nikko Danz, 23, was evacuated from JC Penney about 2:40 p.m. after he had been in the mall for only about five minutes, shopping with friends on the top floor of the store.
Danz heard over speakers an automated message to go to the ground floor, but was told by another customer it was the second time the announcement had been made and no one had moved after the first announcement. Employees soon began rushing people out after that second announcement
Danz was heading down the escalator with friends when he saw "a whole group collected at the bottom of the escalator."
He and his friends decided to run up the escalator and leave the mall through an entrance on an upper level.
"To see all the panic, it was definitely frightening. You hear about this stuff on the news all the time, and wouldn’t expect it to come so close to where you live."
“It’s a messed up situation.”
Jonathan Galingan, 31, was working in a cosmetics store on the second floor of the mall when he heard the commotion of people yelling and running.
"All of a sudden, we just see people bolting across our store, bolting into our store," said Galingan, a manager at Morphe.
For a time, people thought there might be someone shooting in the mall, Galingan said.
"They were yelling, 'active shooter!' We all panicked and were in shock, so we started escorting people toward our backdoor," Galingan said.
He said they didn't see or hear the car, which was a level below.
Galingan and three employees helped lead 20 customers out an emergency exit at the back of the store and descended a staircase that brought them outside the building.
"I was thinking of the children that were coming in, being yanked by their parents," Galingan said.
Galingan didn't have time to grab the keys for his car, so he and his coworkers walked toward a nearby parking lot and watched the emergency crews that converged on the scene.
“I’m still in shock,” he said. “I can’t believe that an incident like this happened at the mall.”
Check back for updates.
The Chicago Tribune’s Elyssa Cherney, Dawn Rhodes, Deanese Williams-Harris, Daniel Haar and Liam Ford contributed.
