VANCOUVER, Wash. — Donning a Joker mask, the suspect in a deadly Halloween shooting at the Vancouver Mall stalked his victim and shot him repeatedly at point-blank range, according to court documents recounting surveillance video from that night.
The police affidavit was filed in Clark County court Monday as the suspect, identified over the weekend as 32-year-old Travis Ward, made his first appearance in court.
Police swarmed the Vancouver Mall on Thursday night after reports of a shooting in the second-floor food court during a family trick-or-treating event. They arrived to find one person dead and two others who had been injured in the hail of gunfire. Officers did not initially make any arrests.
According to the affidavit, police found a man lying on the floor of the food court, dead from "obvious gunshot wounds." The two other victims received glancing blows by either stray bullets or fragments, one to the left side of his torso and the other to his left foot. Both were treated at the hospital and soon released.
The police affidavit filed Monday identified the man killed in the shooting as James A. Perez, called "Jahar" by his family members. He was 26 years old. The medical examiner determined his cause of death was a homicide, caused by multiple gunshot wounds.
KGW spoke Monday with one of the men who was injured in the shooting. Brandon Leyrer said he was at the mall that night for the trick-or-treating event with his girlfriend Micaela Martin, her two young daughters and their father, Daniel Martin.
"I'm just sitting there looking at our 3-year-old, giggling and having fun and the shots went off," Leyrer said.
"It was kind of a really surreal moment, because for those first few shots, it was like the room paused," Micaela said. "Everything paused because everyone was trying to figure out what this was. When the shots kept going, it was like somebody pressed play on life and everyone just scattered and dove under the tables."
'HORRIFYING SCENE': Parents, children were hiding, crying during shooting at Vancouver Mall
Leyrer said that the bullet is still lodged inside his torso and may need to be removed later, if it's removed at all. The father of Micaela Martin's two daughters, Daniel, was the man who was shot in the foot.
"Somewhere in the mix of getting our little one, I remember holding my chest ... but in the mix of going across the main walkway down-range of where the shooter was is when I got hit," Leyrer said. "I know by the time I got to Danny, I checked on him, 'Hey, are you hit? How are you?' He's like, 'I'm hit. I'm hit, too.'"
Micaela Martin said that the shooting had a profound impact on her daughters.
"They're very sensitive to sound right now. Any little thing that drops, pops, snaps, they're at attention, like 'Are we safe?' They immediately look for me to make sure everything is safe. It's heartbreaking," she said.
Identifying the shooting suspect
After getting in touch with Vancouver Mall security, the affidavit says, police were able to review surveillance footage from throughout the mall. They saw a man wearing blue track pants with white stripes, black shoes, a black hoodie and a full-size Joker mask following the victim for a short time before shooting him "in the back of the head at point-blank range." Even as the victim fell, the attacker continued shooting him.
Looking through the video, police tracked the shooter to where he made his entrance. He arrived with two women and a small girl, and the child was wearing a princess costume. The shooter wasn't initially wearing a mask.
After putting on the mask, the affidavit says, the shooter split off and killed the victim. He then reunited with his group and they left the mall together.
Multiple witnesses have recounted to KGW that there was panic in the wake of the shooting, as families with children desperately sought shelter from what many believed was an active shooter.
Police also spoke with the girlfriend of Jahar Perez, who said that they'd come to the mall together with their children for the trick-or-treating event. At some point, they'd become separated from Perez's autistic son, and she said that they'd been looking for him when the shooting happened.
According to the affidavit, police circulated pictures of the shooter's group over the weekend in an attempt to identify them. Shortly after that, a woman contacted them to say that she was one of the people in the photo — she'd been there with her young daughter for trick-or-treating.
"(She) initially indicated that only the above-described females were at the location and did not know why her photo was being circulated by law enforcement," the affidavit states. "When informed that surveillance footage showed her with the above-described male, she stated that the male with her was her boyfriend, Travis Ward."
The other woman in the group was Ward's mother. According to Ward's girlfriend, they'd come to the mall for the trick-or-treating event and "she was not aware that Ward had shot anyone." The affidavit adds that it did not appear any others in the group witnessed the shooting.
After speaking with his girlfriend, police responded Saturday to Ward's home in southeast Vancouver and took him into custody. Though the affidavit claims that Ward matched the appearance of the man in the security footage, Ward "would not admit or offer any explanation as to why he had shot and killed (the victim)."
Ward's next court appearance is set for Thursday afternoon.