ALLEN, Texas — One month after the mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets, a 66-page post-incident analysis released by the City of Allen Fire Department details medical responders’ immediate actions in the wake of the chaotic scene developing at the shopping mall.
Allen Fire Chief Jonathan Boyd said that compiling an accurate report along these lines was a matter of combing through GPS records, interviews and communications with multiple departments.
“We wanted to make sure all of it was released at one time, so that it was completely transparent about our medical response,” said Boyd.
The chief himself was among those who responded to the scene on May 6.
“It was something I had never experienced in the 27 years that I’ve been doing this job,” he said.
While Boyd said that his department has trained for mass casualty incidents and active shooter situations, actually facing the deadliest shooting in the City of Allen’s history was something else entirely.
The report clearly details that from the start as, within seconds of shots firing at the Allen Premium Outlets, dispatch was flooded with calls. Based on the information shared by those witnesses, authorities knew there were multiple victims.
The first call about shots fired at Allen Premium Outlets came in at 3:36 p.m. Within a minute, Allen’s first medic unit was assigned to the case and dispatch had noted the incident in its records as a “mass shooting”.
Within two minutes of that first call, that first medic response to the shooting was en route to the scene. Within three minutes, a second medic team was assigned to the incident and also en route. Within four minutes, a fire engine was also on the way.
But, Boyd said, the scope of threat was not immediately clear as first-responders arrived at the outlet mall.
“The possibility of a second shooter — there was still a threat of that,” Boyd said. “And that’s how we were operating.”
Boyd said that police officers who had arrived on the scene first were already stopping the bleeding for many patients as medics pulled up.
In order to keep firefighters and paramedics safe, the City of Allen is trained to form Rescue Task Forces (RTFs) on the scene. This means police and paramedics work together so they can provide care while a threat may still exist.
