At the start of Friday night’s snowstorm, there was a multi-town call to local police departments, who answered a report of shots fired at the Trumbull Mall.
The details are sparse.
We know they were teens.
We know there was an argument.
We know the mall closed not long after the incident.
We know a gun was involved, and one of the teens used it.
According to the Town of Trumbull’s website, due to the weather, the mall would close early at 6pm. At approximately 5:45pm, calls were made to 911 reporting the incident, which then delayed the closing. With the Monroe, Trumbull, and Fairfield police departments responding to the calls, the two groups, believed to be known to one another, entered on the top level of the Macy’s entrance. And after the two groups argued, a gun was fired. By the time the police arrived, the teens were nowhere to be found, even as the police checked cars as they left the parking lot. Apparently, the teens had vanished.
In 2023, in consultation with the Trumbull Police Department and the First Selectman’s Office, the Trumbull Mall instituted a curfew for teens under 17 years of age. This curfew applies only on Saturdays after 4pm.
This particular incident happened on December 26th, the day after Christmas, when my family went to Build-a-Bear. For Christmas, my daughter received gift cards for the store, and was excited, very excited to use them immediately. She went to Build-a-Bear with her mom and her twin sister, just hours before the incident. My family is safe, my daughter has her new bear, and while I wasn’t there, I cannot stop thinking about what could have happened if I had been.
While this incident did not happen in Stratford, it reminds us that “news” affects us all, that our community is larger than the 17+ miles that make up our town or the 52,000+ individuals that call this place home. News that happens outside of our community, we must also pay attention to. In some way, all news hits close to home for all of us.
You can read more about gun violence on a national scale here, and Trumbull’s website will update as this investigation continues.
