I'm not thinking this is terrorism. I have a hunch it was a crime of passion with one targeted victim, an ex-girlfriend, and 4 innocent bystanders in the wrong place, wrong time.
The shooter has probably blown his brains out by now in the woods somewhere.
I just arrived at this thread and went straight to the last post to see if he had been caught yet so the scenario I presented has likely been thought up by others as well.
“The shooter has probably blown his brains out by now in the woods somewhere.” -— Hopefully.
That's entirely possible. With the timeline, the photos of him coming in apparently without a rifle seem to be about 10 minutes or more before the shooting started. That's plenty of time to come in and make sure that his intended target was there before going back out to get the rifle.
The reports of a second suspect come from early witness reports on the scanner that said that he'd been seen before the shooting talking to a balding man in his 50's near the AMC theater. No word on how that panned out. Could be nothing. Could be everything.
I think we way over-think this stuff. There was a jihadi knife attack at a mall just last weekend, jihadi bombings in New Jersey and New York last weekend. This radicalized Islamic kid with family roots back somewhere in Islamic lands uses a method he knows and is familiar with - maybe he has help, maybe not - he walks in executes his attack quickly before an alarm can be raised, hitting the first place he comes to. He shoots his ammo, drops the weapon and gets out fast, well before any police could get close to responding, runs off in his pre-planned escape route...maybe with help and maybe not...and disappears. He becomes a hero in his world.
The shooter left the weapon on the cosmetics counter.