A lone gunman has disappeared after fatally shooting 5 people in a Washington State mall

Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington, where a lone gunman fatally shot five people Sept. 23
(Image credit: Karen Ducey/Getty Images)

A lone gunman fatally shot five people — four women and one man — in a Macy's store at a mall in Burlington, Washington, a small town north of Seattle, around 7 p.m. local time Friday night.

The shooter promptly disappeared after his rampage, and local police are actively searching for him even as his motives remain unknown. The missing attacker is described as a Hispanic man dressed in black and armed with a "hunting type rifle."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.