GUILDERLAND — Police say a shooting in a Crossgates Mall parking lot on Sunday afternoon “appears to be an isolated incident.”

Guilderland Police responded to a call at 2:51 p.m. that a 17-year-old girl had been shot in the hand in the lot near Best Buy. “All suspects fled prior to police arrival,” according to a Sunday evening release from the department.

The girl was taken to Albany Medical Center with a wound that was not life-threatening, the release said.

Curtis Cox, deputy chief of the Guilderland Police, told The Enterprise on Tuesday, “We are not ready to release any further information yet.” He said he could not say more than what was in the press release.

“That will be my answer to all of your questions …,” he said. “They are working very hard on the investigation.”

Cox did implore anyone who had witnessed events around the Best Buy parking lot on Sunday evening — “no matter how insignificant they might feel it is” —  to call the Criminal Investigative Unit of the Guilderland Police Department at 518-356-1501.

Cox would not say if the shooting was gang-related, if there was a crowd fight, or if reports of car windows being blown out by gunfire were true.

Asked if the Guilderland Police had concerns over recurring violence at Crossgates or plans to control it, Cox said, “We are very concerned about violence whether it be at Crossgates or anyplace else in the town and we take it very seriously. We have a good relationship with Crossgates and Pyramid and we’re always advancing our efforts to stop bad behavior so we will continue to do that in this case or any of the past cases.”

The Guilderland Police have a substation at the mall, and Cox said Pyramid, which owns the mall, has in place a must-be-18 policy, known as MB-18. That policy states that on Fridays and Saturdays after 4 p.m., anyone younger than 18 at the mall must be accompanied by an adult age 21 or older, to be checked with a valid identification card, like a driver’s license.

Regal Cinemas at Crossgates requires anyone 16 and under to be with an adult after 6 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The MB-18 policy does  not apply to Get Air or to stores, restaurants, and venues with exterior entrances.

The Guilderland Police “always review” incidents, Cox said, meeting with “Crossgates folks.” “We always talk about ways that things might be improved,” Cox said. There are ongoing discussions about Sunday’s shooting and potential strategies, said Cox, concluding, “But I can’t get into specifics just yet.”

Asked if there are other places in town with the level of violence or crime at Crossgates Mall, Cox said, “It’s susceptible anywhere in the town. It could be a domestic violence situation; it could be a violent situation in a bar or restaurant. So I don’t want to specifically say it’s at Crossgates Mall although we’ve had these three shootings there.”

Guilderland Police Chief Daniel McNally had told The Enterprise earlier, in relation to needing more officers, that, although Guilderland’s population is roughly 35,000, “Our population at night is well over 100,000 with the mall, SUNY Albany, and things going on in our town with the state workers, etc., etc.”

Last year, a committee in town working on a police reform plan assembled data on Crossgates arrests alone.

In 2017, the mall accounted for 29 percent of the arrests in town, at 305. In 2018, Crossgates accounted for 38 percent of 288 arrests. In 2019, fifty-three percent of 540 arrests in Guilderland were at Crossgates Mall. In 2020, with the pandemic shutdown, 283 Crossgates arrests were made.

Most of the arrests are for shoplifting. “The majority of arrests are not police-officer initiated,” McNally told The Enterprise earlier. Rather, he said, the stores at the mall call on the police to make arrests when they suspect someone of shoplifting or causing disturbances.

History of violence

The last parking-lot violence at Crossgates Mall was five months ago, in November 2021.

After a fighting crowd was dispersed in front of the Standard Restaurant on a Saturday night, Guilderland Police found a 14-year-old boy standing on the sidewalk with stab wounds to his buttocks.

He, too, was taken to Albany Medical Center where he was treated for the wounds, which weren’t life-threatening, Cox told The Enterprise at the time.

A crowd of 30 to 40 people had dispersed by the time more officers arrived just one minute after the first officer reported it. “They just run off,” said Cox, when asked where the crowd had gone so quickly. “I don’t know what the fight was about.”

The last shooting at Crossgates was on July 22, 2020.

The mall was briefly shut down after reports of shots being fired near the Foot Locker on the lower level of the mall. No one was injured.

Police agencies from across the Capital Region converged in Guilderland to assist. The exits and entrances to the mall were blocked off and police officers with high-caliber rifles stood watch at the doors. Other police gathered, with a command center, set up in the nearby Walmart parking lot.

The incident “appears to have been between known acquaintances,” said a statement at the time from Pyramid. “The altercation resulted in the discharge of a firearm inside our facility … Crossgates immediately went into lockdown,” Pyramid said.

On Aug. 26, 2020, Guilderland Police arrested a 15-year-old juvenile male in connection with the Crossgates shooting on July 22. His name was not released because of his age.

He was charged in Albany County Family Court with first-degree reckless endangerment, a felony, and with fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, a misdemeanor. He was also arrested on an outstanding Albany County Family Court warrant.

Before the pandemic and the resulting shut-down and later reopening of the mall, Crossgates had experienced several violent incidents.

On Jan. 11, 2020, frightened shoppers hid during a brawl at Burlington Coat Factory as clothing racks and other items were thrown. “Six to seven males were fighting but had dispersed prior to our arrival and no one was arrested,” Cox said at the time.

On Jan. 26, 2020, a fight outside lululemon athletica on the second floor near J.C. Penney left one of the brawlers with a knife wound. The people involved in the fight had already dispersed by the time police arrived, Cox said at the time. “It appears that they knew each other,” he said, referring to the young people who were fighting at the mall.

State Police later arrested six juveniles who had crashed in a stolen U-Haul van; one was treated for a non-life-threatening stab wound that State Police believe was sustained during the Crossgates Mall fight, Trooper Kerra Burns said at the time.

In December 2019, a Christmas Eve brawl at the mall’s Beef Jerky Outlet destroyed merchandise land eft one person with minor injuries.

In August 2019, two Guilderland officers suffered minor injuries when they tried to break up a fight between several females at Get Air Trampoline Park. Two juvenile males were arrested and charged with second-degree assault, a felony, and with resisting arrest and criminal trespass, both misdemeanors. 

Cox told The Enterprise in 2018 that disruptive groups of shoplifters were a new trend in crimes at the mall. In these incidents, he said, a group causes a disruption in one part of the store — yelling and screaming, for instance, or throwing racks of clothes on the floor — while someone else commits a larceny elsewhere in the store. 

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. Tasheem Maeweather 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.