Although it sounds quite odd to say, the mass shooting performed on September 23, 2016 in the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington was one of the less successful ones in documented history. It is odd because most mass shooters indicate a drive to shoot as many people as possible; to create as many casualties as possible; to gain as much notoriety as possible. It’s almost as if there’s a competition for who can have the highest “kill count.”
That wasn’t the case when Arcan Cetin, a born-in-Turkey naturalized American citizen 20-year-old, took a rifle into the Macy’s department store in Cascade Mall and began to shoot his victims. Cetin was using what was reported as a stolen rifle and he shot five people: four women who died on the scene and one man who died the next day in the hospital.
The post incident investigation revealed that Cetin had originally propped open a theater exit door on the afternoon of September 23rd, perhaps with the intention of entering that theater during a movie. He had purchased a ticket for an afternoon movie and this modus operandi would have been copying the methodology of James Holmes at the Aurora Theater attack.
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The remainder of this article is part of the book "Active Killers and the Crimes They Perpetrated," available in print or ebook via Amazon.
Joshua Borelli
Joshua Borelli has been studying active shooter and mass attack events over the course of the past several years, commensurate with receiving training on response and recovery to natural disasters and civil disturbances. Joshua started to outline this series of articles in an attempt to identify commonalities and logistical needs patterns for response.
