Thousand Oaks resident dead after shooting at Oaks Mall
Thousand Oaks resident Parisa Siddiqui, 29, was shot and killed by ex-husband Kevin Crane, 33, in Paper Source, a store in the outdoor portion of the Oaks Mall. Crane then turned the gun on himself in an attempted suicide. As of Sunday, March 18, Crane was in critical condition due to injuries sustained from the gunshot. The couple has two children, ages 3 and 4, together.
The shooting occurred at around 2:20 p.m., before which Crane and Siddiqui had been arguing. Crane had been charged with domestic violence in 2014, but the case was later dismissed.
Ayla Dvoretsky, senior, was among the students who were in the mall during the time of the shooting. “I was inside JCPenney in the dressing room, so we didn’t hear what was going on,” she said. “My friend’s mom was coming to pick us up and she called us saying to get out because she saw people running out of the mall so I got dressed and we ran out. We actually didn’t hear what was going on until we got outside.”
After exiting JCPenney, Dvoretsky saw the panic caused by the shooting outside the mall. “I saw a parent who had I guess separated from her husband and some of her kids and they were really panicked because they couldn’t get ahold of the others on the other side of the mall. The kids were crying and asking their mom what was going to happen,” she said.
Zain Kazi, junior, was under lock down in the mall. “I was in the changing room in Express, and someone opened the door on me and just started screaming. They didn’t say what happened but told me to go to a back room,” he said.
“I think we were locked down for around 2 hours until security came and cleared each store one by one. We were one of the last stores to be cleared,” Kazi further explained.
Kazi also was able to see the panic the shooting caused in the mall. “When I was walking to the back, I saw people running and food and drinks were all over the floor,” he said.
