"Made us feel helpless": Edmontonian says Bill C-18 protest led to confusion during WEM shooting
A West Edmonton Mall store manager says the removal of news sites on Meta platforms due to the company’s protest of Bill C-18 led to her feeling “helpless” after a shooting sent the shopping centre into lockdown for more than two hours on Monday evening.
At around 7:40 pm on August 21, police responded to reports of a shooting at the mall and, upon arrival, found three men with gunshot wounds.
It’s reported that four people pulled into the parking lot and went into the mall, and when they came back 40 minutes later, a white SUV that had been sitting in the parking lot pulled up, and “gunfire was exchanged.” The SUV immediately fled but has since been recovered by police.
The three men found injured were taken to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The fourth person, who was uninjured, ran inside the mall and has not been located.
A handgun was recovered from inside the mall. It is unclear who the groups are or their motivations, though police believe the incident to be targeted.
Nyarondi Motsi was working a 3 to 10 pm closing shift at West Edmonton Mall on Monday evening when she heard an odd sound coming from inside the mall.
“We went to the entrance of the store and saw people running from something and realized it was the lockdown siren,” she said, adding she thought it may have been a drill at first.
“I realized we didn’t have any warning about a drill, and they would never do that on a Monday night. I then went into full manager mode.”
Fearing the worst, Motsi focused on keeping her staff and customers safe and calm. However, she says the two-and-a-half hours inside the mall felt “endless” as the group tried to piece together what was happening through “Instagram snippets and tweets.”
“At first, I think everyone was really on edge, so it didn’t feel as bad, but the longer we were there without any information, the slower time started to move.”
Motsi added that there were inaccurate reports of the shooting spreading on places like Instagram, such as reports of deaths, and that the shooting had occurred inside the mall.
“It made it much more terrifying as we were on edge trying to get any real-time updates that would help us to stay safe. It made all of us feel helpless and probably a lot more frightened than we needed to be.”
She added that both the federal government and Meta have not considered the “real and very dangerous impact” of the fallout over Bill C-18, noting how wildfire evacuees are having difficulty staying up to date on the latest information due to the lack of news on Meta platforms.
“We all need to be far more aware and critical of the choices that people in power are making on our behalf because they will affect us all in a very tangible way.”
During a press conference on Tuesday morning, Acting Edmonton Police Chief Darren Derko acknowledged that “a lot of misinformation” was circulating throughout Monday night’s incident.
“I want to remind citizens to obtain their news from professional and legitimate news sources or from our website and social media pages directly. This will help limit the misinformation that gets out there,” Derko said.
Daily Hive has contacted Meta for comment on the situation but has not heard back since publication.