The Westfield Montgomery Mall in Maryland was evacuated Friday night for a reported bomb threat before the threat was later determined to be “not valid” by Montgomery County Police.
Police posted on social media that the mall was being evacuated as a precaution at 8:12 p.m.
Sammi Silber, a reporter with The Associated Press, told WTOP that she could tell something was wrong around 7:40 p.m. when she was finishing dinner with her mother at the Cheesecake Factory inside the mall.
“It was wild,” Silber said. “I was facing the window that overlooks the mall. And the way people were running around the corner, sprinting … you don’t have time to react or really realize what’s going on.”
Police arriving now at Montgomery Mall. Bomb threat, large police presence. I’ve never seen so many people running in my life. pic.twitter.com/dnXUHOCnmt
— Sammi Silber 🏒 (@sammisilber) August 18, 2023
Silber said her “fight or flight instincts kicked in” as she and her mother left the mall as quickly as they could, hearing panicked yelling and the word “bomb.” She said it took a long time to get out of the parking lot as cars lined up, “fleeing.”
“You see people in a panic, everybody getting up and running for the doors,” Silber recalled. “At first, I thought it was an active shooter.”
Silber said the limited information from the police didn’t help her remain calm and “that moment of panic” still stuck out in her mind.
“You’ve got to find the calmness somewhere, and somehow I found it,” Silber said. “Now it’s just the shaken up part of it, because you’re running on adrenaline.”
Police announced on social media that the bomb threat was not valid and that they had turned the building back over to mall security about an hour later, at 9:10 p.m.
WTOP’s John Domen contributed to this report.
