Cascade Mall shooting suspect admits to killings
Sep 26, 2016, 5:50 AM | Updated: 3:41 pm
Arcan Cetin appears in Skagit County Court on Sept. 26, 2016. (KIRO 7)
(KIRO 7)
The 20-year-old man suspected of shooting and killing five people at the Cascade Mall in Burlington on Friday night is charged with five counts of first-degree premeditated murder.
Arcan Cretin is held on $2 million bail.
Cetin admitted to police officers that he is the man holding a rifle in the mall’s surveillance video, according to court documents. He also admitted to the killings.
Arcan Cetin: What is known about previous run-ins with the law
Court documents state that Cetin had dinner with his father around 4:30 p.m. on the night of the shooting. The two had a falling-out before he left for work at a gym on Friday night — shortly before the shooting at 6:53 p.m.
After the incident, Cetin’s dad told investigators that his Ruger 10/22 rifle, and some .22 ammunition were missing from his home. According to documents, a Ruger rifle was used in the shooting, along with a 25-round magazine.
Video from the Cascade Mall shows Cetin arriving at the mall in his car. He then walked through a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, into the mall, then through Macy’s and exited to the parking lot. Cetin moved his car closer to an entrance at Macy’s, retrieved a rifle from the trunk of the car, and walked back into the department store. According to security footage, he was in Macy’s for about one minute. After the shooting, Cetin left the rifle on the makeup counter and left the store. Video also shows Cetin driving away from the mall.
Police then followed up with Cetin’s co-workers in Oak Harbor, and his father and mother, who told them where he lives. The documents say that he is closer to his mother than his father, and that both parents helped pay for his apartment.
Cetin was arrested near his Oak Harbor home on Saturday, nearly 24 hours after he allegedly walked into a Macy’s department store at the mall on Friday and shot five people — one man, and four women.
The Cascade Mall shooting: Arcan Cetin taken into custody after 24-hour manhunt
This is not the first time Cetin has had a run-in with the law. There are more than half a dozen records of criminal cases in Island County where he lived in the past three years.
The Seattle Times reports that he had been charged three times for assaulting his stepfather. He had also been arrested for drunk driving. In December 2015, a judge ordered that he not be in possession of a firearm. This was in relation to an assault case on his stepfather, who asked the judge to remove a no-contact order between them, saying that Cetin was “going through a hard time.”
Trooper Mark Francis said detectives have searched Cetin’s home and questioned him at length. As for whether Cetin was working alone — that remains unclear.
“We feel confident that we have the shooter,” said Washington State Trooper Mark Francis. “Whether or not anyone else was involved, that’s what we’ll be determining.”
Investigators have not yet determined a motive. Detectives learned that Cetin had an ex-girlfriend who worked at a Macy’s, but police say she worked at a different store.
Detectives have also searched Cetin’s car and home — they removed boxes from his home, but it is unknown what those boxes held. Police have interviewed people connected to Cetin, such as his neighbor, 21-year-old Amber Cathey who has lived next to the alleged shooter for three months.
“He was really creepy, rude and obnoxious,” Cathey told the Associated Press. The two went to high school together at Oak Harbor High School and she said he acted similar in class as well. He graduated in 2015.
She said she was frightened of him — so much so that she kept a stun gun near her while in the apartment. She told the AP that she had to block him on Snapchat after he sent her a photo of his crotch.
Cathey went as far as to avoid Cetin by keeping a lookout for his car, and walking a much longer way around her apartment if she saw his vehicle.
Dakota Kineon went to Oak Harbor High School with Cetin. She told reporters that he had sexually harassed her and others at the school.
“It doesn’t shock me, sadly,” she said of Cetin being the alleged shooter. “It breaks my heart that it happened.”
Another high school classmate, Matthew McClimans, described Cetin as “normal” but that he was a little weird. The two were in ROTC together.
“Every once in a while he’d make inappropriate comments: Things that are rude or in bad taste,” McClimans said.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
