Stacey Keating, a spokeswoman for CBL & Associates Properties, which owns the Monroeville Mall located about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh, said the policy taking effect Feb. 27 won't apply to department stores or others which have exterior entrances or the mall's movie theaters.
Rather, it will ban unaccompanied minors from most of the mall after 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Stores with exterior entrances control their own security, though mall security officers will be checking mall guests who enter common areas from anchor stores to ensure they comply with the age requirement, Keating said.
The new security procedures were already in the works, but were fast tracked after a shooting in the mall's Macy's store Saturday night.
That's where police said 17-year-old Tarod Thornhill, of Penn Hills, shot another man during an argument, and wounded two bystanders. The man targeted in the shooting and one of the bystanders remained in critical condition Tuesday, and Thornhill remained jailed and charged as an adult with attempted homicide, aggravated assault and other crimes.
Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. said he had pitched a consultant's plan last year to put security cameras on roads around the mall, and other measures meant to discourage gang members and others looking for trouble from visiting the mall.
"The idea was to develop a virtual perimeter checkpoint around the mall that would alert law enforcement officials to vehicles that belonged to wanted people or known gang members," said that consultant, John Hudson, of Security Consulting Solutions Inc. Hudson said mall officials were "lukewarm" to the idea.
Keating said the way that system was described to mall officials it "would not have prevented the incident on Saturday because the alleged assailant did not have any outstanding warrants."
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But Russell Carlino, who heads the county's juvenile probation office, said Thornhill was wanted on a warrant for leaving the Community Intensive Supervision Program, which required him to live with relatives while attending an after-school probation program.
Thornhill was declared delinquent — the juvenile court equivalent of a conviction — for a gun violation in October 2011, and another gun violation last year put him in the juvenile program from which Carlino says he "went AWOL" in December.
Online court records don't list an attorney for him.
