A gunman opened fire inside a Fairfield Spirit Halloween store Friday night, killing one and wounding six before fleeing, and the FBI has now joined local police hunting the shooter.
Officers were called around 8:30 p.m. to the seasonal retailer at Solano Town Center on Gateway Boulevard, a Bay Area mall about 45 miles northeast of San Francisco. They found seven people with gunshot wounds. One was pronounced dead at the scene. Six were taken to area hospitals. The shooter had already fled.
By early Saturday the FBI’s Sacramento field office confirmed it had deployed its Evidence Response Team to help the Fairfield Police Department process the sprawling crime scene. At least three of the wounded remained in critical condition. The complex stayed locked down as an active investigation site, and the gunman remained at large.
The New York Post reported that Fairfield police, backed by Suisun City police and the California Highway Patrol, secured the perimeter of the 130-store commercial center. Tactical units cleared stores and adjoining areas, including the nearby Regal Edwards cinema, where moviegoers were questioned during the sweeps. Patrons had poured into parking lots and concourses after the shots rang out.
Fairfield Police Chief Dan Marshall told reporters detectives still had not determined how many shots were fired, whether the attack was targeted, or whether they were looking for one suspect or more than one. Authorities said they did not believe there was an immediate threat to the public. That assurance did little to settle the shoppers and workers who had just lived through it.
Witnesses described multiple gunshots in rapid succession. One man, whose wife had been inside the store, told KCRA what she relayed to him in the moment.
The department issued a clear statement on the status of the case:
"This is still a very active crime scene. Detectives are speaking with witnesses and diligently working to identify the suspect responsible for this horrific shooting,"
Another account described a store employee who sought shelter in an adjacent restaurant after an armed individual entered and opened fire. Detectives continued witness interviews Saturday while the FBI team worked the physical scene inside the temporary Spirit Halloween space, which occupies a former Best Buy location.
A separate fatal shooting at a Spirit Halloween in Madison Heights, Michigan, had already occurred Friday afternoon. There, a 21-year-old Detroit man was killed after an argument with an acquaintance. A 21-year-old concealed pistol license holder from Oak Park was arrested at that scene after bystanders intervened. Michigan authorities called that shooting targeted and said it posed no continuing public threat. The California case is being treated as a distinct incident, with its own open manhunt.
The decision to bring in the FBI Evidence Response Team underscores the scale of the work still ahead in Fairfield. Local officers discovered the wounded and the dead. Federal specialists are now helping process the store and surrounding areas so detectives can identify who pulled the trigger and why.
Chief Marshall’s public comments left the core questions unanswered: how many rounds were fired, whether the victims were chosen, and how many people police should be looking for. A witness account of “five, six, seven shots” when people were running is the closest public detail so far on the volume of fire. Detectives have not locked that number down.
For families of the dead and the six hospitalized, and for the workers and shoppers who scrambled out of the aisles, those gaps are not abstract. One person is gone. Others remain in critical condition. The person who fired the shots is still unidentified and free.
Spirit Halloween locations draw heavy foot traffic in the final stretch before the holiday. A gunman turning one of those floors into a crime scene, then vanishing before police arrive, is the kind of failure ordinary people pay for first. Federal help on the evidence is useful. An arrest would be better.
Law-abiding shoppers should not have to dive for cover in a costume store on a Friday night. Until the shooter is caught, the only honest measure of this response is whether detectives close the case, not how many agencies show up to process the aisle.
