LOS ANGELES // Authorities on Saturday arrested a Turkish-born man suspected of shooting five people dead, including a teenage cancer survivor, at a shopping mall in the US state of Washington.
State Patrol spokesman Sergeant Mark Francis named the suspect as Arcan Cetin, 20, a resident of the nearby town of Oak Harbor, saying he was arrested about 24 hours after the killings. There were no other suspects.
Police had initially described the suspect as a Hispanic man in his late teens or early 20s.
A Facebook page that appeared to belong to Mr Cetin said he was born in Adana, Turkey, went to Oak Harbor high school and had worked at a grocery store on the town’s Whidbey Island.
YouTube users posted lewd comments on Mr Cetin’s Twitter page Saturday in response to the mall shooting.
The gunman opened fire with a rifle in the makeup section of a Macy’s department store late Friday, killing four women and a man.
The FBI office in Seattle said it had no evidence the shooting was terrorism-related.
The shooter later left the store on foot, triggering an intense manhunt.
A weapon was recovered at Cascade Mall in Burlington, a town of about 8,000 people some 110 kilometres north of Seattle.
“I don’t know what his motivation was to do this,” Chris Cammock, police chief in the nearby town of Mount Vernon, said. “But I certainly plan to find out through the investigation, to the best of our ability.”
The youngest victim was named as Sarai Lara, 16, who survived cancer as a young girl. Relatives identified another victim as 52-year-old Shayla Martin, who worked as a Macy’s makeup artist.
"We're really having a tough time right now," her sister Karen Van Horn told The Seattle Times.
It was the latest incident in America’s epidemic of gun violence.
Burlington mayor Steve Sexton’s voice trembled as he noted that the randomness of gun violence in America – which causes an estimated 30,000 deaths a year – had hit his small town.
“This was a senseless act, the world knocking on our doorstep. It came to our little community,” Mr Sexton said.
The shooting came amid fierce debate in America over gun control laws. It is a hot issue on the campaign trail ahead of the November 8 presidential election.
* Agence France-Presse
