BATON ROUGE — Raleigh Robertson thought she’d be in and out of the Mall of Louisiana in minutes.
Instead, the 22-year-old found herself running for her life.
Robertson had just walked into Dick’s Sporting Goods Thursday afternoon, on the phone with her mom, when gunfire erupted nearby.
“Me and her are going back and forth on the phone call and all of a sudden they start firing off,” Robertson said. “I could tell these were not single shots. It sounded like two separate guns going off because they weren’t in sync. It was very fast-paced and lasted about 15 to 30 seconds.”
Her mom heard it too through the phone.
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“She’s begging me, ‘please stay on the phone, please stay on the phone,’” Robertson said. “She knows I’m by myself. She doesn’t know how far my car is. I can’t even imagine what she was thinking in that moment.”
Inside the store, panic set in.
“You could just see people running in. You could hear people screaming, crying, ‘duck down,’ ‘there are shooters,’ ‘get down, get down,’” she said.
Robertson said the sound of the gunfire told her everything she needed to know. “With it being as crystal clear as it was, I knew it wasn’t far,” she said. “I didn’t know if they were on the first floor or second floor, but they were close to where I was.”
Within minutes, she made a decision to get out.
“Did I know that was going to happen within the seven minutes of me walking into the mall?” she said. “No. But it went off, and I got right the hell back out.”
As she ran out of the store and into the parking lot, alarms blared behind her.
“You could hear the security sensors going off,” she said. “I’m sure some people had stuff in their hands and just ran. In that moment, nobody’s thinking about dropping anything — they’re just trying to get out.”
Robertson wasn’t hurt, but she says the experience changed how she sees everyday life.
“When you leave your house, you shouldn’t have to think, ‘is this the last time I’m going to walk out my front door?’” she said. “That’s the last thing I should be thinking about at 22 years old.”
She said she doesn’t plan to return to the mall.
“Absolutely not,” Robertson said. “Given where it’s at and given that things like this tend to happen, it’s just not worth the risk.”
Now, she hopes speaking out serves as a warning.
“I want this to be a wake-up call,” she said. “If something like this happens, what are you going to do? Sit there and hope you make it out, or do everything you can to get yourself out so your parents don’t get that call?”
Robertson said she’s still processing what happened — but one feeling stands out.
“I’m still in shock,” she said. “But more than anything, I’m angry and frustrated.”
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