CHICAGO _ Police say one man was in custody after a vehicle drove into a Schaumburg mall and was seen on social media smashing displays in the mall Friday afternoon.
A black SUV smashed the doors of the mall near the Sears and Rainforest Cafe area of the mall just before 2:45 p.m., according to Schaumburg officials.
"It crashed into the entrance, the doors and went into the mall,'' said Allison Albrecht, a Schaumburg spokeswoman.
The situation caused "minor injuries," she said.
"There were no major injuries," Albrecht said, but did not elaborate or say how many victims there were.
She did not know what path the SUV took or why it stopped, but said the lone driver, a male, was taken into police custody.
Albrecht said officials were still completing an evacuation as of 3:55 p.m. and have asked the public to avoid the area, if possible. "There's a large police presence," Albrecht said.
Some video and photos from the scene appeared to show authorities escorting someone wearing a long-sleeve red shirt from Woodfield Mall, with the person's hands behind their back.
Schaumburg police and fire officials were at the scene, as were FBI officials and officials from the Cook County sheriff's office, who were assisting local officials.
"The FBI is aware of the situation at Woodfield Mall and is assisting at the request of local law enforcement," according to a statement from the Chicago office of the FBI. "There is no known threat to public safety at this time."
In the video shared on Twitter, someone shouts "This is not happening right now," as the SUV drives through the mall near a Forever 21 store, smashing a display in the middle of the mall as people run after the SUV. The SUV then appears to smash into a store.
"Oh my God," the person says.
Overhead video of the scene showed an entrance to the mall smashed, glass on the ground, leaving a hole large enough for a car to have traveled through.
In another video showing smashed windows at a mall entrance, one person says "Oh my goodness," and another says the driver "went all the way through ... through the mall."
Jackie Sanko of Schaumburg was waiting in line at Garrett's Popcorn when she heard screaming, followed by a crash and the sound of metal screeching.
She was shocked to see a black SUV zig-zagging inside the mall.
"I've got to get out of here as fast as I can," she said she thought, running between the poles of the popcorn stand to duck inside a nearby store.
She took cover in La Senza, where employees rushed her and customers to a stockroom in the back, offering everyone bottled water. She estimated that they were on lockdown inside Woodfield for about an hour and 40 minutes, but she felt more secure once she was in the back area of the store.
"You hear of things like this happening," she said in the mall parking lot, heading to her car, "but you never think they'll happen to you."
Bob Thomas, a Chicago Tribune executive, said he was walking through the Macy's store on his way to the Apple store to get his phone fixed, and as he headed toward the main mall, the fire alarm went off.
"The loudspeaker kept saying there's been an incident in the building. They said, 'Please leave as soon as possible,'" Thomas said. "There was no security staff telling people to do anything."
He thought it was a false alarm and kept walking. But then he said he heard someone say they were evacuating the mall.
"It was kind of chaotic," Thomas said. "A guy in the Apple store said, 'They're reporting a car driving through the first floor.'"
He headed back to Macy's.
"I got to the center of the mall, I saw this car. It's a black SUV crashed against a pillar in front of Clark's shoe store. The front tire was flat. Two firemen were walking around it," he said. Thomas took a photograph, and "all of a sudden the tact team came in with assault rifles and yelling, 'Get out, get out, get out of the mall!'"
On his way out, Thomas said he saw police walking a man through the smashed doors of the Sears store. He appeared to be in his 20s, stocky, dressed in a red shirt and was in handcuffs, he said.
"He looked pretty calm," Thomas said. Then he saw "line after line of police pouring into the parking lot."
Robert Fakhouri, who owns the Tea Leaf Market inside the mall, said he was not at work Friday but quickly started getting phone calls from his employees as the chaos unfolded.
"There was an individual who ran his vehicle through the front doors of the building and then began proceeding through the walkways and targeting specific kiosks," Fakhouri said. "I'm not sure why he was targeting the kiosks."
Fakhouri said several police officers then brought the suspect into his store to detain him. None of his employees were hurt, he said.
Jonathan Galingan, 31, was working in a cosmetics store on the second floor of the mall when he heard the commotion of people yelling and running.
"All of a sudden, we just see people bolting across our store, bolting into our store," said Galingan, a manager at Morphe.
For a time, people thought there might be someone shooting in the mall, Galingan said.
"They were yelling, 'Active shooter!' We all panicked and were in shock, so we started escorting people toward our back door," Galingan said.
He said they didn't see or hear the car, which was a level below.
Galingan said he and three employees helped lead 20 customers out an emergency exit at the back of the store and descended a staircase that brought them outside the building.
"I was thinking of the children that were coming in, being yanked by their parents," Galingan said.
Galingan didn't have time to grab the keys for his car, so he and his co-workers walked toward a nearby parking lot and watched the emergency crews that converged on the scene.
"I'm still in shock," he said. "I can't believe that an incident like this happened at the mall."
Nikko Danz, 23, said he was told to leave the JC Penney at the mall about 2:40 p.m. after he had been there for only about five minutes.
Danz said he heard over speakers an automated message to go to the ground floor, and when the announcement was made a second time, employees began rushing people out. Danz was heading down the escalator when he saw "a whole group collected at the bottom of the escalator."
Danz said he and his friends decided to run up the escalator and leave the mall through an entrance on an upper level.
"To see all the panic, it was definitely frightening. You hear about this stuff on the news all the time, and wouldn't expect it to come so close to where you live," Danz said. "It's a messed up situation."
