Family of Chuck Eagan, man killed in mall shooting, talks about his heroic act inside Macy’s
Sep 26, 2016, 4:01 PM
By: Joanna Small, KIRO 7
Four women and one man were shot to death inside the Burlington’s Cascade Mall Friday night. We now know much more about that man, 61-year-old Chuck Eagan, a longtime Boeing employee.
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“I miss him and I love him and I can’t believe he is gone,” Chuck’s daughter Jennifer DeLorenzo told KIRO 7.
Using Skype, a family still in shock spoke with us through tears and unfinished sentences.
“Our sense of feeling for the last six hours has just been total numbness, we haven’t — I don’t know,” Ray DeLorenzo, Jennifer’s ex-husband, explained, trailing off.
Jennifer, Ray, and their kids — Chuck’s three granddaughters — talked to us from Vancouver, Washington, about life with Chuck and now life without him.
>>PHOTOS: 5 killed in Cascade Mall shooting
“I really used to love sitting around while he played guitar. That was always really fun. I loved his music skills,” Chuck’s oldest granddaughter, 20-year-old Alex Eagan, said.
“I have been talking a lot about wanting to go see him recently and it’s kind of hard that I can’t see him now, and honestly, it’s just really hard to process,” the middle granddaughter, 16-year-old Faith DeLorenzo, explained.
The family didn’t find out until Sunday morning that Chuck was a victim of the shooting that seemed so far away on the news. Ray spoke with Chuck’s wife, who was shopping in the Macy’s with Chuck Friday night.
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“All of a sudden they heard a click, click, click, click, and Chuck knew immediately what it was, so he grabbed her hand and took off running,” Ray told us of what happened inside the Macy’s.
Chuck’s wife tripped, fell, and crawled under a table; Chuck was shot in the head and died at Harborview.
“It’s hard to think he went out like that when he was such a good man. It doesn’t seem fair,” Alex said.
On Monday, the man police say shot him will appear in Skagit County Court.
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“I hope it haunts him,” Ray told us.
“I hope God can forgive him because I don’t know if I can right now,” Jennifer said, sobbing.
