DALLAS — The Cho family settled around a table near the kitchen at Eddie’s Diner, not far from the giant American flag on the wall. The chocolate chip pancakes, dusted with powdered sugar, were their weekend ritual. They opened a pack of crayons for William, who’d just turned 6.
Some 25 miles away, Mikael Garces needed to help her fiancé buy an all-white outfit for a destination wedding. Mikael was excited for Greece, but she knew she’d have to take him shopping if he was going to find the right thing to wear. He’d be too indecisive on his own.
At home in Sachse, 8-year-old Sofia Mendoza started working on a new story: The Twins That Didn’t Think Like Twins. She wanted to be an author when she grew up. Maybe even win a Pulitzer Prize. Sofia was going shopping with her parents and her big sister, Daniela. She’d keep writing when she got back.
In McKinney, Joseph Adams and his 12-year-old son stood up from the bleachers after watching the Wylie high schoolers lose the baseball playoffs on a heartbreaking walk-off. On the way home, they figured, why not stop for some new shoes? Garrett had a $50 Nike gift card from the Easter Bunny.
On that first Saturday in May — hot, but not stifling — families packed the parking lot of the Allen Premium Outlets, one of the busiest shopping centers in the region, sitting roughly 35 miles north of Dallas. This time of year was full of occasions: Mother’s Day, graduation, family barbecues. Summer break was just weeks away and with it, the promise of beach trips, water parks and dashing through sprinklers. People needed bathing suits and dresses and new perfume.
Alf Gonzalez, who owns the Fatburger at the mall, usually doesn’t work weekends, but May 6, he was short-staffed. The restaurant does a third of its business on Saturdays, so he headed in early to start portioning out ketchup and hand-dipping onion rings. He turned on the fryer and waited for the oil to bubble. The entire kitchen smelled like bacon — a scent that never gets old to Alf.
At the diner, William finished breakfast as his little brother James, 3, wiggled in his seat. The family was surrounded by the sounds of a Saturday morning rush: Plates sliding out of the kitchen window, silverware clanging, waitresses asking four-tops, “Need a refill?” It was a place for families, extra high-chairs stacked in the corner.
The staff brought out a gooey cinnamon roll, overflowing with glaze, topped with a single candle. They gathered around William as they broke into a ragged version of Happy Birthday. William took a deep breath, and presumably, made a wish.
***
So many people were drawn to the outlet mall on Saturday that by the time Irvin Walker II arrived in early afternoon, he had to confront something he hated: long lines.
From the car, he could see a line out the door at Tory Burch, so he dropped off his girlfriend to look for shoes.
Irvin, 46, went looking for a parking spot, slowly maneuvering past the H&M.
Just then — at 3:36 p.m. — a man in black stepped out of a silver sedan, took two steps and raised a rifle, and then came a pop pop pop that made people freeze, then run. Pop pop pop.
Irvin was blindsided as his car crawled directly in front of the gunman. Pop pop pop. The bullets kept coming and coming and coming.
As Irvin’s windshield shattered, he felt something hit his body. It didn’t register that he’d been shot, but he looked down to see blood. He accidentally shifted his car into neutral. The engine revved.
Nearby, an Allen police officer was at the mall on an unrelated call. As he was leaving, he stopped to talk to a woman and children about seatbelt safety. He heard the gunshots. Pop pop pop pop pop.
“We got shots fired at the outlet mall,” he called in.
Later: “I need everybody I got!”
***
The people who saw the gunman were jolted by panic — they sprinted through bushes and jumped into cars. A black pickup sped away, tires squealing. Horns honked. Another car bolted out of the parking lot, its dashcam capturing the shooter growing smaller in the frame as he strode toward the mall.
For the people in front of the H&M, there was simply nowhere to go. The Mendoza sisters were walking by with their parents. The Cho family was there. They fell in the perimeter of a blooming bush, which offered no protection.
So many shoppers dialed 911 the operators began answering in nearly identical ways. “Allen 911. Are you calling about the shooting?”
In a sprawling mall of more than 100 stores, many people couldn’t immediately comprehend what they were facing.
Mikael and her fiancé kept striking out in their search for a perfect white outfit. For all their efforts, Brian had found only a pair of salmon-colored shorts. He handed over his Wells Fargo card at H&M at 3:31 p.m., grabbed the bag, and headed next door to Ralph Lauren. Brian slipped on a fancy black jacket. It looked tailored to him, a perfect fit. “That looks really good,” Mikael told him.
Suddenly a swarm of people was pushing toward them. Must be kids playing tag in the store, she thought.
A mall custodian came running: “¡Está matando niños! ¡Le disparó a un niño! ¡Está matando niños!”
He’s killing kids.
Mikael realized that her fiancé, who doesn’t speak Spanish, wouldn’t understand. “There’s a shooter,” she explained. “This is real. We need to hide.”
Brian stared at her. In the way that time slows and expands in a moment of panic, she took in his eyes. They were light blue, but when he was nervous, his pupils got so big and his eyes became dark pools. She remembered how, when he proposed to her, his eyes seemed huge and black. Now they were inside of a mass shooting, and his eyes looked just like they did back when he was down on one knee.
Across the parking lot, in Nike, 12-year-old Garrett was searching for his dream basketball shoe: the Luka 1s, in mint and racer pink.
They were out of the Lukas in size 10.5, but his dad said to try a few others. Make sure they fit. Get a good price. Joseph wandered toward the clearance section while Garrett slid off his charm-covered Crocs to test bright orange Zions.
Joseph thought he heard glass breaking. But it had a different kind of “ping” to it. He didn’t have time to figure out what it was about before it felt like they were on a boat that had been tipped — everyone was flowing toward them. Did a car just crash into the building?
Joseph, 6-foot and a little over 200 pounds, lurched back toward his son, grabbed him by his sleeve and threw him against the wall, covering him with his body. Garrett didn’t make a sound.
“What’s going on?” Joseph yelled to another shopper, who was moving from the front of the store.
“Someone’s shooting in the parking lot.”
Alf had left Fatburger to check on his other restaurant, down in Garland. His 16-year-old daughter Kiera had arrived to help out, and he offered to take her with him. She didn’t want to leave the restaurant short-staffed. “You know what? I’m going to stay.”
He felt proud. At 16, she had taught herself every position: Food runner, cashier, fry cook, expediter. One day, Alf and his wife hoped, Kiera would take over the business they’d built.
Alf was nearly home when his shift leader called: Shots fired at the mall.
“Where’s Kiera?”
***
The shoppers that day had read all about mass shootings, the ones that unfolded somewhere else. More than 200 in the U.S. already this year. Uvalde, 384 miles away, with its grim anniversary coming up. Jobs and schools required periodic active shooter training. Many understood the basics: Run, hide, fight.
But which?
Run, thought Brian, inside the Ralph Lauren. Still wearing the fancy black jacket, he yanked open a door for Mikael to get through. But the door led to a window display. They would be completely exposed. They sprinted in the other direction.
A store employee appeared, pointing to the stockroom. Hide. Mikael took cover with a crowd of people near a tower of blue shoe boxes.
Mikael texted a friend: “I don’t want to let my mom know until we’re safe. God forbid we don’t make it out but I need someone to know.”
All over the mall, people were doing the same thing:
“Call the cops”
“Hurry”
“Please.”
Around the same time, the Allen police officer radioed from nearby, panting as he ran: “... at Polo Ralph Lauren, moving. Trying to get to him … [There’s] still shooting.”
Sarah Dugan and husband Sean sprinted out a Ralph Lauren emergency exit. They’d been shopping for their honeymoon in the French Riviera. Sarah sensed that, as they ran, Sean was re-positioning himself to try to protect her, his wife of 22 days.
In the parking lot, Sarah pounded on car doors, desperate for someone to let her and her husband inside and carry them away. But the first car she banged on kept driving, and so did the second.
Finally, a compact car with the windows down rolled by. “Can we get in?” Sarah yelled. The driver stopped so the couple could jump into the back seat.
In the Nike store, Joseph felt trapped. There’s safety in space, he thought. He rushed with his son out an emergency exit, pushing Garrett in front of him, and sprinted for his truck.
At some point, Joseph remembered the 9-millimeter tucked into a holster on his hip. Fight.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. He heard that all the time. Joseph is a teacher and a coach, but generations of his family members fought in the military. He felt ready to be that good guy.
If something happened to him, he thought, his son would know that at least Daddy didn’t just sit there.
Garrett jumped in the truck’s front passenger seat, and Joseph threw him the keys. “Dude, just wait here,” Joseph said. “I’ll be back. Lock the truck.”
Inside, Garrett curled his long body into the foot well. Dad’s on his way to get killed by someone with a bigger gun, he thought.
Garrett looked down at his feet. He was still wearing the orange basketball shoes.
***
Irvin, bleeding from his chest, realized he needed to climb out of his car and find help.
A security guard appeared to try to bring him to safety. But then the guard himself was shot. Irvin ran, then jogged, then walked, as fast as he could to a store.
If he stayed too long, he could bleed to death. God was his only way out, he thought. Irvin asked for his protection.
Calls barraged the 911 operators, every person trying to convey the terror at the mall. Mothers, children, store managers. Some sobbed into their phones. Others whispered.
They saw a victim at the Francesca’s, at the New Balance, at the H&M. Stop the bleeding. Police are on their way. They’ll be there as soon as they can.
Minutes ticked by and the desperation grew.
Sofia and Daniela’s father was among the dozens who dialed 911 in those frantic first minutes.
“I need an ambulance, please,” he wailed. His girls and his wife had been shot. It was bad.
***
Joseph spent a couple minutes scanning the scene, his gun pointed down so as to not appear a threat to police. When he didn’t see a gunman or any victims, it hit him: What was he doing out here?
He ran back to the truck, back to his son, and tried to find the quickest way out of the mall, turning to drive past the H&M. In front of the beige storefront, Joseph saw shattered glass and blood.
Thank God, he thought, that his son was on the passenger side. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to see. But as their truck crawled by, he heard Garrett’s soft voice: “It’s bodies. People are dead.”
That’s when Joseph saw a little boy. Hurt, but alive.
He whipped the car around. Garrett closed his eyes.
Joseph saw a man pressing a rag against the injured child’s wounds. Inside Joseph’s truck, his wife stored a bag of clothes she wanted to donate. He parked the car and jumped out to sift through it. He skipped over an old white jacket — too blank of a canvas, he thought.
Instead, he grabbed dark clothes, running them over to the man and handing them off. He instructed the man to pack the little boy’s wound. He knew this was important because of first-aid training he does at school.
“Keep it on there,” Joseph told the man. “Keep it on there.”
The boy was not crying.
Joseph walked a little further and saw two people on the ground, almost on top of each other. He tried to check on them but he didn’t get a reaction. It dawned on him why.
He had a bad feeling that the injured little boy belonged to the people lying on the pavement. But with the damage that bullets left behind, it was hard to tell how much they looked alike.
Joseph waved his arms above his head, yelling to a police officer. “We have a kid that’s alive!”
***
Irvin, still bleeding, saw a crowd of police, but they were not responding to him. He thought through how he could communicate to the officers that he was a gunshot victim — not a threat to them — during an active shooter situation. In that moment, he thought about how innocent Black men had been killed and knew that he had to be careful not to be perceived as a suspect.
An officer came to check on him. He got Irvin into the back of a cruiser and drove off to find Irvin an ambulance.
Collin County dispatch was crackling.
3:49: p.m.: “Be advised we’ve got a couple officers headed your way with a male victim. Two shots.”
Two minutes later: “We’ve got victims – possibly six – some are at H&M.”
In front of that H&M, Sofia and Daniela’s father was dialing 911 again, still begging for an ambulance. One of his children wasn’t breathing.
“Please, please,” he cried, “I don’t want to lose two more.”
“I have help on the way to you right now.”
“Get me somebody here,” he begged again, choking on his words. “Please, I’ve been waiting for 20 f---ing minutes, my wife is dying.”
On the line, phones rang incessantly in the background as operators struggled to triage the calls – at least 60 so far.
“You’re not the only one dealing with this right now. We’re getting help to you as fast as we can.”
“Send somebody, please!”
Shortly after, he called again. His words were hard to make out over his sobs. The operator repeated herself.
“Are you calling about the shooting? Do you have a victim?”
“I’ve got three!”
***
Three miles away from the mall, at Medical City McKinney, word of a mass shooting was spreading.
Trauma director Dr. Elizabeth Kim was at a nurse practitioner’s wedding reception when she got the call. She jumped in her car to drive the 20 minutes to the hospital.
She worked the phone as she drove, mobilizing operating rooms, surgeons, anesthesiologists and blood.
Among those who arrived to help: chief nursing officer Cassidi Summers, who had been at the Allen mall with her family earlier that afternoon. They had walked the same route as the shooter less than an hour before.
The first patient in their hospital was Irvin Walker. He was calm.
Dr. Kim took stock of the damage inflicted by the bullets, finding there were too many wounds to count. She saw bullet fragments around his head, his neck, his chest, his arm. Two were particularly concerning: One just missed his heart, another hit just below his clavicle, near major blood vessels. Doctors would have to open him up.
Six more patients were on their way.
***
The shooting ended in less than five minutes. The Allen police officer found the gunman and brought him down. He was left splayed on the pavement, an AR-15 rifle knocked out of his hands. Across airwaves, first responders received the message. Shooter is down.
Inside bathrooms, stockrooms and fitting rooms, people continued to cower and cry.
Alf’s daughter Kiera led diners to a tucked away service corridor. On the phone, she was calm — and safe, she assured her dad, who was rushing back toward the mall.
“I just need you to be a few feet away,” Kiera told him.
Alf peeled back into the parking lot, but with such a heavy police presence, he couldn’t get closer than seven storefronts away. Everywhere he looked, he saw officers with long guns.
Across the mall, police escorted hundreds of people out of hiding. They walked in single-file lines, their hands in the air. Many still held shopping bags.
But Kiera still hadn’t been let out of Fatburger. It started to sink in to Alf that whatever evil had happened at the mall must have happened very close to his restaurant.
Finally, Kiera told Alf over the phone that she was coming out. “I’m by the Armani,” she told him. He still couldn’t see her. “I’m by the Armani!” he yelled back.
When they spotted each other, Alf pulled his daughter to him. It was only then that she cried.
People were stranded around the mall. They couldn’t get their cars out of an active crime scene and it felt impossible to call an Uber. Neighbors started showing up to offer rides, bottled water and snack bars.
Helicopters whirring above made it hard to hear, and everything smelled like sweat. As crowds congregated under trees, looking for shade, rumors spread. Had there been more than one shooter?
People stopped Mikael and Brian over and over to ask questions. He was carrying a shopping bag, the one holding his new shorts. Already, people understood: H&M meant you were right there.
At home, Joseph turned to the TV news. He needed to hear that the little boy was OK.
***
When the mass shooting happens at the mall, an entire region is suspended in a specific form of anguish.
A shooting at a church or a school silos the unlucky. My kid doesn’t go there, thank god. Not my congregation, phew. Just a year ago, Sofia and Daniela Mendoza’s family had agonized over the shooting at Robb Elementary. The 19 murdered children were roughly the girls’ ages. Uvalde had been close — though it was still hundreds of miles away from home.
But on May 6, anyone could have been at the Allen outlet mall. Across North Texas, family groups chats exploded: Are you all OK? People refreshed social media, looking for the names of the dead and the wounded. Did I know them?
In his office at school in Wylie, Joseph Adams got an email from the superintendent: Two elementary schoolers in their district, sisters Sofia and Daniela Mendoza, were dead. Their mother, Ilda, was injured.
Also killed was Aishwarya Thatikonda, an engineer from India who was about to celebrate her 27th birthday. And Elio Cumana-Rivas, 32, who was seeking asylum in the U.S. And Christian LaCour, the 20-year-old security guard who died after trying to save Irvin’s life.
And three members of the Cho family: parents Cindy and Kyu, and 3-year-old James. Only 6-year-old William, hospitalized in the ICU, would get to go home, folded into the arms of his grandparents and extended family.
Mikael, the pediatric dentist who hid in Ralph Lauren, went back to work on Monday. One of the first patients to sit down in her chair was a giggly 3-year-old.
It could’ve been you, she thought.
Alf learned from Twitter that the Allen officer killed the gunman right outside of his business. In a picture of the shooter’s body that spread online, Alf can see his Fatburger logo — right there, in the bottom corner.
The shooter had brought eight legally purchased weapons with him to the outlet mall. Three were on him as he carried out his rampage, with another five weapons in his car.
Alf pored over his surveillance footage. People stampeding through his dining room, crouching by his beverage counter. The video showed Kiera guiding customers to safety. This asshole was so close to my daughter.
Two days after the shooting, Irvin awoke from surgery. Hospital workers wheeled him back to his hospital room, where Sister Act 2 played on TV. In it, Whoopi Goldberg leads a raw but gifted group of kids through choir practice, her fellow nuns looking on.
“Relax,” she tells them. “Take a deep breath.”
With all he’s been through, Irvin felt grateful. To the officer who helped him. To the God he prayed to. To the doctors who worked to repair his body. To the family who supported him.
In the movie, the boy with the solo finds his voice. And in his hospital room, Irvin too began to sing.
“Oh, happy day.
“Oh, happy day.”
____
Editor’s note: This story is based on dozens of interviews, eyewitness accounts, news stories, police scanner traffic, 911 calls and notes from reporters at the scene. Where possible, witnesses’ accounts were corroborated with phone records, videos and text messages. Irvin Walker’s account came from his attorney, his daughter and his own statements at a press conference. Details from the Cho family’s breakfast were provided by the diner. Information about the Mendoza children came from their aunt.
It was reported by Talia Richman, Claire Ballor, Zaeem Shaikh, Sarah Bahari, Aria Jones, Jamie Landers, Maggie Prosser, Haeven Gibbons, Sriya Reddy, Marin Wolf, Kevin Krause, Noor Adatia, Lauren McGaughy, Isabella Volmert, Kelli Smith, Lana Ferguson, Valeria Olivares, Imelda García and Michael Williams. Editing by Senior Editor for Storytelling Kelley French.
