Chicago Sun Times: Video shows SUV driving inside Woodfield Mall, crashing through displays.
WSB-TV Atlanta: Man who drove SUV into Chicago mall acted alone.Ronin Diedenhofen was walking through the lower-level of Woodfield Mall Friday afternoon when he saw an unusual sight: An SUV driving through the concourse.
At first, he thought it was being put out on display. Within seconds, he realized it was something different.
“It took me a minute to register what was going on,” said Diedenhofen, 19. “I heard a loud bang; it was the car hitting one of those little trains that kids usually ride in at malls. That was like, ‘OK, that’s not normal.’”
As it turned out, the driver had rammed through a side entrance to a Sears store just a few minutes earlier, around 2:20 p.m., on the east side of the mall near a Rainforest Cafe. From there, the 22-year-old man behind the wheel smashed into one store after another before crashing to a halt, according to Schaumburg police. He was held by shoppers — including two off-duty cops — and arrested minutes later by responding officers, police said.
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Nathaniel Findlay, 21, was walking into the mall for the start of his work shift when he saw the SUV pull up to the Sears.
“He was approaching the door, and he came to a complete stop,” Findlay said. “I got a quick glance at him and you could tell real quick the gears were turning, he was thinking about it.
“And then he just accelerated right through the doors,” Findlay said. “He was not going to stop until he got inside that mall.”
Findlay went right back to his car and called his cousin who was inside the mall.
“Dude wherever you are, get down, get out,” he told his cousin. “There’s a car inside.”
Back inside the mall, Diedenhofen managed to pull out his cellphone and record much of the incident, later posting it to Twitter, where it quickly went viral.
“It was a safe distance away,” Diedenhofen said. “There was no way it would turn around and go for me, so I pulled out my phone and started recording.
“But you can even see on the video, I’m jumping back when he looks like he’s reversing, I’m not taking a chance,” he said. “It seemed like he was just trying to go for as much damage as he could.”
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