Calamity struck Milpitas Friday night following an altercation and false reports of an active shooter at the Great Mall.
Police rushed to the scene at around 5:30 p.m., however, after locking down the building and conducting a thorough investigation, they concluded that there was no evidence a shooting ever took place.
Mall employees described the scene as chaotic with people running and yelling from all sides.
"My manager managed to agree and just close the doors from our store and completely lock everything up and turn off the lights," a rattled store employee told KCBS Radio.
Reports of a fight with a knife initially prompted the police response followed by multiple reports of a shooting inside the Burlington Coat Factory, exacerbating the situation. Captain John Torres with the Milpitas Police Department said despite the frantic reports, they came up empty handed after a sweep of the Great Mall.
"We found nothing inside of the store that indicated that a shooting had occurred there," he said. "We did not locate any victims of a shooting during a search of the interior of the entire mall."
It remains unclear what triggered the reports about the shooting.
Two or three individuals have been detained on suspicion that they were involved in the potential knife fight, officials said.
The incident bears an eerie similarity to two previous gun scares that have struck the Great Mall in the past three years.
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