Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts identifies the victims of a deadly shooting at an Oregon mall, saying there was "no apparent relationship" between the two and the shooter.
By Isolde Raftery, Ian Johnston and Becky Bratu, NBC News
UPDATED at 1:12 p.m. ET:?The masked gunman who killed two people and wounded a third in a shooting at an Oregon mall packed with holiday shoppers before committing suicide was identified Wednesday as Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22.
The suspect, wearing a hockey-style mask, opened fire with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle that he had stolen from a person he knew, Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said at a morning news conference.
?At this time we do not understand the motive of this attack,? Roberts said, adding that the suspect apparently did not know any of his victims:??No apparent relationship between the suspect and his victims.?
The two people who were killed were identified as Steven Mathew Forsyth, 45, of West Linn and Cindy Ann Yuille, 54, of Portland. The injured person, Kristina?Shevchenko, 15, was in critical condition at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital on Wednesday after undergoing surgery.
The sheriff said the gunman's rifle jammed during the attack, but he managed to get it working again. The carnage could have been much worse if authorities hadn't arrived on the scene so quickly and shoppers hadn't done such a good job getting out of the mall, Roberts said.
?He had a mission set forth to really take the lives of people within that mall,? the sheriff said.
Witnesses who survived the shooting at the?Clackamas Town Center, which was teeming with holiday shoppers, described a scene of chaos and panic. The gunman entered the food court area near Macy's and announced, ?I am the shooter,? and ?began randomly spraying bullets, they said.
Witnesses Kelly Lay and Mira Sytsma recount the terrifying moments when a man opened fired at Portland-area mall, killing two before turning the gun on himself.
"All of a sudden, I just heard a series of gunshots? boom, boom, boom, boom, boom? whatever the shooter was shooting at, they continued to shoot," shopper Bill Hoff told NBC station KGW.
Mira Sytsma told NBC?s Matt Lauer she was walking toward a store near the food court when she heard the first shots go off.
?After the first couple of shots I had a feeling I knew what was happening,? she said.
Kelly Lay was in the food court when he heard ?two loud booms,? he told Lauer. Glancing to his left, he saw people running in panic. He ducked and hid behind a pillar, where two elderly women ? including one in a wheelchair ? had already taken shelter.
?As soon as I heard bullets hitting behind me, the wall, seeing it hit the tiles, basically the food signs above? and seeing the tiles break around me, I kind of got in fear and scared for my life,? Lay said.
He saw people running toward the exit and told the women to do the same. After helping the woman in a wheelchair, Lay took off running.
Girl, 15, shot in Oregon mall cheats death twice
Sytsma saw one of the gunman?s victims lying on the ground about 50 feet away from where she stood by a kiosk. Turning her head away from the victim, she caught a glimpse of the shooter.
?I couldn?t really see his eyes,? she said. ?I felt like I looked right at him and it was pretty scary to see him face to face like that.?
Sytsma and three other women ran for cover inside a store.
People in line to get their photos taken with Santa immediately dove for cover, KGW reported, while others hid in break rooms and bathrooms.
The mall Santa, Brance Wilson, said he was about to invite the next child onto his lap when the shots rang out upstairs. He said he? instead dove for the floor and kept his head down.
Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts discusses the gunman who opened fire at a Portland-area mall, saying it "looked to be a random shooting."
"I heard two shots and got out of the chair. I thought a red suit was a pretty good target," said the 68-year-old Wilson, The Associated Press reported.
Sheriff Roberts said his department's thoughts and prayers went out to the victims and their families.
"For all of us, the mall is supposed to be a place we can all take our families, feel comfortable, this is the holidays ? these things are never supposed to happen. We have a young lady at the hospital fighting for her life right now," he said.
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