Shoppers ran screaming for the exits and took cover inside stores as a deadly gunfight between a robber and an armored-car guard broke out near a bank in a suburban shopping mall.
Shrieks echoed throughout the two-story Deptford Mall as merchants rushed to lock in their customers, and more than 20 bullets flew near the bank's entrance, some ricocheting off walls.One bank customer and the gunman were killed Monday afternoon, while the guard and a teen-age shopper were critically wounded.
"People were shopping as usual. Then out of the blue I heard what sounded like firecrackers," shopper Peter Frantzen said. "There were three - boom boom boom - then a pause then another three. I stuck my head out of the store and saw people running toward the end of the mall."
Authorities were searching for more suspects early Tuesday after finding what they believed was a getaway car near the mall with a gun and a bag of money inside.
"We believe there were three people involved, maybe four," Gloucester County prosecutor Harris Y. Cotton said this morning.
The guard, who had just picked up money from a PNC Bank on the second floor, encountered the gunman outside the bank and the two exchanged shots. The guard, who was shot in the chin and the abdomen, emptied his 9mm revolver and killed the gunman.
"We don't know who fired the first shot or what was said," FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi said. "It's going to take a while to pull it all together."
The robbery had been in the works for some time, Cotton said.
"They had this place cased out," he said. "It was a well-planned robbery."
The unidentified gunman was still holding a money bag as he lay dead, said arcade owner Walter Berglund. Authorities did not know how much money was in the bag. A semiautomatic gun was found next to his body.
The guard, Rudolph Matlack, 21, staggered back inside the bank after the shooting and an employee quickly locked the glass door, Cotton said.
Shoppers at the mall, one of the biggest in southern New Jersey and about 10 miles from Philadelphia, started running after hearing the shots.
"It was chaos," Berglund said. "It was unbelievable."
One witness told The Associated Press that 15 minutes after the shootout, a man was running through the mall waving a gun behind him. Others told police they saw one or two men flee in a car.