An armed subject who fired shots into the air, leading to a lockdown of the busy Market Basket shopping plaza in Lee, New Hampshire, on Saturday afternoon is now in police custody.
Police say 27-year-old Gordon Falt, from Bar Harbor, Maine, drove a truck to the Lee Market Place and fired an undetermined number of shots in the parking lot, forcing all the stores into a two-hour lockdown.
Officers responded to reports of shots fired at the plaza around 11:40 a.m. The armed subject, who fired between one and 13 shots into the air, refused to comply with any verbal commands, Lee Police Lt. Donald Laliberte said.
The marketplace, which also houses a Rite Aid, a restaurant and a hair salon, was placed on lockdown and no traffic was allowed to enter or exit the plaza.
Hundreds of people were shopping at the plaza at the time of the incident, police said.
"There's hundreds of people there shopping, if not a thousand," Laliberte said. "It's a very busy marketplace."
About a dozen law enforcement agencies responded. SWAT teams were called in from Rockingham County and Stratford County, according to Laliberte.
Lee resident Andre Huppe showed up at the scene after the standoff started and said he heard police "talking to [the suspect], trying to get him to surrender, saying that they want a peaceful ending to this."
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The subject was taken into police custody around 1:45 p.m. and cars were then permitted to leave the plaza.
"The tactical team entered the marketplace and successfully placed the male in custody," Laliberte said. "Apparently upon the team entering the marketplace, he complied and gave himself up, with no injuries, no shots being fired, or anything of that nature."
No one was hurt during the incident, Laliberte said.
"No injuries at all," he said. "The ambulance was sent there as a precaution to make sure [the suspect] was OK. As far as we know he's not injured at all."
Falt was taken to a nearby hospital as a precautionary measure.
It was a nerve-wracking couple of hours people whose afternoon shopping trips turned into a lockdown inside Market Basket.
“I was talking on the phone in my car and then all of a sudden I hear six shots go off,” said Connor Crowell, who lives in Dover, NH.
Crowell went inside the Market Basket after seeing police arrive.
“I got locked in there because they got locked down,” he said, adding that “they kept everyone in the back of the store.”
Crowell said he was grateful to hear no one was hurt.
Earlier in the afternoon, Lee Police Chief Thomas Dronsfield had said on Facebook that there was an "armed subject situation" at the Market Basket plaza on Route 125 and that "all stores are in lockdown."
The manager of the Market Basket store confirmed that the store had been in lockdown for at least an hour. No one that they knew of had been hit and no injuries had been reported inside of the store, according to the manager.
Investigators seized Falt's truck from the parking lot, and they say they will be looking inside of the vehicle and online for evidence as part of their search to figure out why this all happened Saturday.
The incident remains under investigation.
