'We heard 30 gunshots': Family near Green Bay casino shooting
In a moment of celebration, one look sent a crowd enjoying a festive dinner into a scramble for safety.
On May 1, the Pittsburgh Predators hockey team had just defeated the No. 4 ranked team in the country at a tournament in Green Bay, Wis. Player Blake Sinicki was there along with his parents, Mark and Tavia, all of Center Township.
“We were feeling pretty good about ourselves,” Mark Sinicki said. “We were having a team dinner.”
Sinicki said it was all smiles until a parent reentered the room.
“I could see the fear on his face,” Sinicki said. “He said, 'Active shooter.'”
Around 7:30 p.m. May 1, a former employee of the Oneida Casino in Green Bay entered the complex and opened fire, killing two people and wounding another.“He was targeting a specific victim who was not there, but he decided to still shoot some of the victim's friends or coworkers, it appears,” said Brown County Sheriff Lt. Kevin Pawlak at a news conference May 2.Authorities engaged and exchanged gunfire with the shooter, which led to his death. He was pronounced dead at the scene.Three officers are on administrative leave while the investigation continues.
Mark Sinicki said there were a tense few moments when the team was uncertain of what to do because they didn't know where the shooter was in the large complex, which includes a hotel, convention center and the casino as well as the restaurant they were inside.Mark Sinicki said the door seemed like a risky option if the gunman was just outside, so his attention was drawn to a nearby window with a crank. He picked up a chair and threw it, smashing the glass to create an opening.“It broke immediately,” he said. “Before I could start trying to break the rest of the window out, folks just started flowing through the window.”All three of the Sinickis and a couple of other composed parents helped about 10 people hop through the window.“A few people got cut going out the window,” Mark Sinicki said. “My son was kind of pushing the glass down. He actually cut his hands up a bit.”
Mark Sinicki said everyone in the group made it to safety. He said he and his family drove their car to a different parking lot a few hundred feet from the complex.“A couple minutes later, we heard 30 gunshots,” he said. “It was rapid fire. We didn't know it at the time, but that was the assailant being taken down by law enforcement.”Mark Sinicki estimates it was about 10 to 12 minutes from the time the incident was brought to their attention to the time they left the adjacent parking lot to look for bandages for Blake Sinicki's hands.“For me, it seemed like things were kind of in slow motion until folks got out, and then the minutes after we got out of the building, it was just pandemonium,” Mark Sinicki said.
According to a Wisconsin news station, elders of the Oneida Tribe honored the people shot through a sacred tobacco burning ceremony Saturday.The ceremony was intended to help heal the reeling community.Trauma affected each of the Sinickis differently.Mark Sinicki said he hasn't seen any aftershocks of the experience in his son, but his wife has some anxiety over the ordeal.For him, it prompted a renewed awareness of his surroundings, something familiar from his time in the military.“This affects people differently,” Sinicki said. “I went to the mall this past weekend. I was looking around and seeing where I could escape. Does that person look suspicious?”Mark Sinicki said the shooting also reinforced his already strong respect for police officers everywhere.“Their heroic actions taking down the shooter really resonates with me,” he said. “I have an overwhelming respect for law enforcement and the work they do.”<i>The Associated Press contributed to this report.</i>
