Three folks got hurt in a shooting at the Macy’s inside Westfield Valley Fair Mall, right on the edge of San Jose and Santa Clara in California. This happened on Black Friday, November 28, 2025, and cops are calling it some kind of personal beef that got out of hand. They locked the place down for about an hour and a half, and thousands of shoppers had to scramble out of there.
A tweet from X.
It went down around 5:40 p.m. local time, with the mall packed wall-to-wall for those holiday deals. Valley Fair’s one of the biggest spots up north, with more than 200 stores pulling in crowds like crazy. The victims an adult guy, an adult woman, and a 16-year-old girl all got shot but nothing life-threatening. They were rushed to a hospital nearby and are doing okay.
San Jose Police Sgt. Jorge Garibay put it this way:
“It wasn’t about going after random people—this was between the suspect and one of the victims.”
Sounds like they knew each other, not some wild rampage on shoppers.
The shooter, a man who showed up with a few women and some strollers, dipped out before the police could get there. No one’s in custody yet, and they’re still piecing it together.
People inside heard what sounded like up to 15 shots. One guy tweeted on X:
“Bro I was inside and heard 15 shots go off. They cleared the mall.”
Another parent talked about hunkering down in a back room with their kids, saying,
“I can hear people screaming outside. Pray.”
The whole scene turned chaotic fast, with everyone bolting through halls and lots.
A quick 20-second video clip blew up on X, pieced together from phone footage. It’s all vertical, showing folks sprinting past shops and down escalators inside one person in a red shirt even trips in the panic. Then it cuts to outside at twilight, families hauling bags and jogging to their cars, and later at night with crowds under lights and cop cars flashing everywhere.
Overlays on the video had stuff like
“Shots fired in Macys at Valley Fair Mall San Jose,”
With a typo or two, like “San D Jose.” It’s raw and shaky, really captures the terror, especially seeing families with little ones caught up in it.
These kinds of videos spread like wildfire on social media during stuff like this, posted by people there and then algorithms push them out. They hit the public before official word sometimes, ramping up the worry and demands for info.
San Jose and Santa Clara police handled the response. Lockdown lasted 90 minutes while they swept the building room by room. Then evacuations kicked in, guiding people out safe.
Cops made it clear no active threat anymore. From helicopter shots, you could see hordes spilling out, some stuck behind barricades in stores like Abercrombie & Fitch. Medics treated the injured right there before hauling them to the ER.
San Jose Police Chief Anthony Mata was on top of it, giving updates and reassuring folks the community’s safe. The mall opened back up partially that night, but they told people to steer clear while investigating.
It started up on the second floor near Macy’s after some argument boiled over. Victims are stable, no deaths. Suspect’s still out there.
Valley Fair’s massive 2.2 million square feet, 18 million visitors a year and no big shooting history, but retail spots like this deal with security headaches all the time. Black Friday amps everything up, more people means more chance for trouble.
Looking bigger picture, California had over 1,200 non-fatal shootings in public spots last year alone, according to CDC numbers, a lot from personal fights. Even with tough gun laws, stuff like this slips through, as the state’s Justice Department reports point out.
