Westfield Marion: Fighting teens send shopping centre into lockdown, at least three injured

Police are searching for three youths who sent an Adelaide shopping centre into lockdown after they started fighting with weapons.

Westfield Marion was evacuated on Sunday afternoon and South Australian Police issued a statement telling the public to stay away from the venue.

The centre changed all of its digital ad screens to warn shoppers about the potential threat, urging them to “escape, hide, tell”.

The incident unfolded just before 3pm when police received reports of two groups of young males fighting in the food court area of the centre.

At least three members of the group were reported to have extendable batons and police could not rule out the possibility of a knife being involved.

The boys with weapons then chased the other group of boys through the centre and into David Jones.

As a result of the incident, centre management activated an audible alert and evacuation alarm, and the centre went into lockdown.

Numerous police resources, including STAR Group officers, attended the centre to commence a search for the groups involved in the initial altercation and to evacuate shoppers locked inside stores.

SA Police Assistant Commissioner Scott Duval said he was confident police could catch the three teenage boys after watching CCTV footage.

“I have looked at the CCTV, it involves three youths and I will call them boys under 18 years of a caucasian appearance. They approach another group of boys and an altercation occurs,” he said.

“I would say that it’s clear from the vision that this is not a random attack. The boys would appear to be known to each other but obviously we’re still in the early days of investigation.

“It does not appear that the three boys were intending on targeting anyone else in the centre.

“We should be able to locate these boys but I do encourage anyone with information who knows their identity or has vision or any observations of what occurred to talk to police.”

Three people were injured during the chaos of the evacuation.

“The service is treating a woman in her 70s with a shoulder injury, and a person in their 30s with a knee injury,” an SA ambulance spokesperson said.

“Injuries for both patients are non life-threatening.”

A 14-year-old girl was also injured during the evacuation.

The shopping centre had only just completed active shooter drills last week.

The incident comes months after an armed knifeman killed six people at Westfield in Bondi Junction in April.