Police investigating fatal shooting at Monroeville Mall, victim identified

A 20-year-old man was shot and killed Wednesday after an argument outside of the Monroeville Mall, police said.

Monroeville Police Chief Doug Cole said the shooting occurred at 1:24 p.m. in a mall parking lot near the entrance of Party City and JCPenney. A suspect remains at large.

The man, identified by the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office as Saheed Gayle of Pittsburgh, was shot in the chest.

He made his way inside the mall entrance, where he was found and transported to Forbes Hospital, police said. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Stacey Keating, spokeswoman for CBL Properties, which owns the mall, said Monroeville Police had secured the scene shortly after the shooting.

Allegheny County homicide detectives are investigating. The mall remained open Wednesday.

It is not clear what sparked the shooting, but Allegheny County Police said the shooting occurred during an argument; the victim was not randomly targeted. Cole said three people, including Gayle, were involved and he believes they all knew each other.

Ashley Kapalka, 25, said she and her friend Sarah Moore were walking out of the mall when they said they saw an argument among two men and a woman. She said the men were in each other’s faces, and one of them had a gun.

“I turned around and looked at her and said, ‘He had a gun.’ So we all ran to my car,” Kapalka said, noting they had children with them.

She said she heard two gunshots and when she looked back, she saw a man try to run and then fall to the ground.

Moore, 27, said she was afraid — but more for the children.

“My main concern was getting them to safety,” she said.

Here are two women who heard one man get shot right outside of Party City at the Monroeville Mall. pic.twitter.com/ELrF9QG2CJ

— Dillon Garrett Carr (@dillonswriting) October 7, 2020

Just waiting on details from Monroeville police chief. pic.twitter.com/h4qtk4rVmn

— Dillon Garrett Carr (@dillonswriting) October 7, 2020

Anyone with information concerning the shooting is asked to call Allegheny County police at 1-833-255-8477. Callers can remain anonymous.

Past violence

The mall has been the site of other violence in recent years.

In September 2019, someone fired shots outside the mall’s movie theater in what Cole said was likely a targeted event. No one was injured, and nothing was damaged by the gunfire.

Earlier that year, there was a shooting at Macy’s after a fight in the lower level of the mall grew until someone fired 14 shots at the department store. No one was injured.

In 2015, three people were shot inside Macy’s at the mall as the result of a fight nearby.

Still, Cole believes the mall is a safe place to shop.

“I shop here, my family does. I still consider it safe,” he said, adding that the mall has always attracted people from multiple locations, including from out of state.

“But when you look at the overall safety of the facility, these events are pretty rare. … They certainly don’t happen on a weekly or monthly or yearly basis,” Cole said.

The Monroeville Police Department established a presence inside the mall with a small, unmanned station in the 1990s, Cole said.

The chief also said the police department places officers on details, along with the mall’s security team. He commended the mall for its use of a surveillence video system, which, in this case, caught the incident on film.

“This event took seconds,” he said. “Those types of things are very difficult to police.”