GUILDERLAND — Shaadi L. Moffett, 28, of Albany has been charged in connection with a Valentine’s Day stabbing at Crossgates Mall. The arrest was made Saturday afternoon at 1:30, just 25 hours after the stabbing. 

Moffett, of 81 North Allen St., apartment 1, was charged with first-degree robbery and second-degree assault, both felonies; and second-degree menacing, fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and endangering the welfare of a child, all misdemeanors. 

Police got a call at 12:23 p.m. on Feb. 14 of an assault near the Best Buy store on the mall’s second floor, according to a release from the Guilderland Police, which described the events this way:

During an altercation between Moffett and a woman she knew, Moffett stabbed the other woman in the left arm, police say, before fleeing toward the Best Buy parking lot. The victim, with a laceration to her left arm, was taken by Guilderland Emergency Medical Services to Albany Medical Center Hospital. 

Moffett was arraigned in Guilderland Town Court before Judge Bryan Clenahan, and was remanded to Albany County’s jail with bail set at $4,000, police said on Saturday.

There have been three brawls at Crossgates over the past two months, two of them caught on videos that were then posted to social media. One of those was on Christmas Eve in the Beef Jerky Outlet, the other on Jan. 26 outside lululemon athletica. 

A third, which was not reported by other media but which Guilderland Police have confirmed, happened Jan. 11, starting at the mall entrance to Burlington Coat Factory and then moving throughout the store, with people throwing signs and a stroller. One local resident contacted The Enterprise to say that she and others, including her 73-year-old mother, had hidden in a storage closet until the fight ended.

In November 2016, a gun was fired in Crossgates Mall, causing panicked shoppers to flee and resulting in a lockdown while police searched the premises. One young man was acquitted of several charges including possessing a firearm, in the incident, but convicted of reckless endangerment. The prosecution in the case said the shooting was gang-related.

The Guilderland Police are currently hammering out the details of an agreement with Pyramid for stepped-up patrols at the mall, Deputy Chief Curtis Cox told The Enterprise earlier. He said in late January that he expected to make an announcement about it “in the next couple of days.” 

No announcement has been made yet.  

Guilderland Police already patrol Crossgates, in two different programs, Cox told The Enterprise earlier. 

Mall patrols involving officers who are working overtime are reimbursed to the police department by Pyramid Management, owners of Crossgates Mall. These officers concentrate on common areas like the food court. 

Another program involves officers in the Retail Intervention Detail, or RID, which is not reimbursed by the mall. This program arose in response to a new trend in shoplifting, Cox told The Enterprise in December 2018, in which groups of people — two, or three, or five people — work together to create a distraction. This may involve throwing clothing racks onto the floor, and yelling and screaming, he said; the people involved in the disruption may do the shoplifting themselves, or their associates in another part of the store might do it. 

Sometimes the theft is not noticed until after the disruption has ended, he said. 

The age of the perpetrators varies, but generally they are kids or young adults, Cox told The Enterprise earlier.