Teen worker helps others to safety during deadly Halloween shooting at Vancouver Mall - oregonlive.com

Bronwynn Cruden was doing homework at the front desk of her family’s Twisted Escape Rooms on the first floor of the Vancouver Mall when loud sounds reverberated through the walls Halloween night.

A group of people were inside the business’ “pirates room” and had just asked her for their first clue for the live-action game, in which they must solve a series of puzzles to work their way out of the locked room.

Before Cruden could tell them the full clue, “I heard ‘boom, boom.’ I didn’t process the first few shots, because it sounded so loud and abrupt. Then it was like one after another after another.”

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The 16-year-old was holding down the business Halloween night because her stepmother was out of town due to a family tragedy and her father was driving home from a delivery in Kent, Washington, for his trucking business. Her best friend was sick so she figured she could earn some extra money working.

The teenager looked up from the desk and saw dozens of families screaming and running through the corridor outside the glass front doors of the business and realized she needed to get people out.

She ran to the front, locked the doors, and when she ran back to the “pirates room” to try to alert the six people inside, she saw parents with young children desperately trying to get inside her business. She raced back to the front doors to let them in.

“I’m not going to just like leave them out there,” she said she thought, as she went back to unlock the front doors, though she had no idea if there was a gunman loose or not.

A man was holding a wailing baby in his arms. Three children in costumes were crying and the oldest kept asking, “What was that? What was that?” as their mother tried to tell her kids not to worry, Cruden recalled. She ushered them to the business’ back door to escape.

The teenager then alerted the six people in the business’ pirates room.

“I didn’t know if they heard the shots or thought it was something else,” Cruden said.

Her stepmother, Wendy Cruden, was in Utah but receives notifications on her phone whenever there’s any movement in the business. She said she usually glances at them and goes about her day. But Thursday night, she got a notification of movement in the lobby and when she watched the business’ surveillance video, she was stunned. She heard the approximately five to six gunshots and immediately called her stepdaughter and kept her on the phone.

“When I saw that I was just shaking, and of course, I’m just trying to keep her calm too,” Wendy Cruden said. “I told her to lock the door, get everybody out the back.”

Then the stepmom advised her daughter to lock herself in the back bathroom until someone could come to pick her up. Meanwhile, the stepmom was monitoring a group chat of mall business owners, who were communicating and sharing what they were hearing and seeing. Many reported they were locking themselves inside their businesses as people were running in the mall’s corridors.

The Cruden family’s two dogs, a teacup Chihuahua named Daisy and a Cavalier King Charles named Atlas, were both in the back of the store.

“We didn’t really know what was happening,” Wendy Cruden said.

She told her stepdaughter “just to sit really low on the floor with the dogs and stay on the phone with me.”

A friend of her husband’s was on his way to the mall to pick her up.

The 16-year-old Union High School junior got her keys and phone and stayed in the locked back bathroom. She said she heard sirens and then police in the mall’s corridor.

“When police were going through the hallways, my Chihuahua barked once and I was like, ‘stop barking, please stop barking,’” she said.

Bronwynn Cruden estimated she remained in the back bathroom for about 10 minutes before her father’s friend arrived and she escaped out the back door. That’s when she learned one person had died and two others were wounded in the area of the second-floor food court when gunshots rang out about 7:30 p.m. The mall was hosting a family-friendly Halloween trick-or-treating event that night, and many children, teenagers and adults were there to avoid the rain.

“I was just really nervous. I didn’t really process what had happened. Nobody knew what was gong on,” Bronwynn Cruden said.

Her stepmom told her to leave the dogs behind. “I love my dogs dearly, but I love my stepdaughter more and knew she needed to have her wits about her and didn’t want her having to drag two dogs on a leash,” Wendy Cruden said.

Wendy Cruden was proud of her stepdaughter. “She did the right thing. She was very brave, and I felt like I was watching a hero when I saw the video,” she said.

The stepmom said she felt terrible because she had previously punished her stepdaughter and had taken her personal cellphone away from her for not being truthful about who she had gone out to a movie with recently. But thankfully, her daughter had the business’ cellphone that night.

“Our hearts absolutely go out to the victims,” Wendy Cruden said.

Bronwynn’s father, Andrew Cruden, returned to the mall just before midnight to retrieve the dogs after a police SWAT team had contacted the family at 11:50 p.m. as they were clearing stores one by one to see if anyone was still inside. The business plans to donate 100% of its proceeds over the next five days to the victims’ families, according to Wendy Cruden.

A morning later, Bronwynn Cruden said she’s thankful she wasn’t harmed but is sad that someone died and others were wounded from a shooting on Halloween.

The Halloween night scare gave new meaning to the two-year-old mall business, Twisted Escape Rooms, which sits between JC Penney and Old Navy.

“I watched hundreds of parents running and picking up kids,” Bronwynn Cruden said. “It was the most people I’ve ever seen in that mall, and more kids than adults or teenagers. I’m mostly sad for the people, for the kids.”

She said she still can’t shake the sounds of all the “kids’ screaming.”

— Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, [email protected], follow her on X @maxoregonian, or on LinkedIn.

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