ALLEN, Texas — Allen Police Lt. Kris Wirstrom and Fire Division Fire Chief Daniel Williams have a unique perspective of the event and the day that will forever be connected with their city. The mass shooting at the Premium Outlets that left eight people dead and half a dozen injured had a profound impact on the first responders who rushed to the ever-changing and chaotic scene.
"It's like being hit by lightning, everything changes instantaneously. You're either ready or you're not," Wirstrom said.
Both first responders were just a couple miles from the outlets when the "shots fired" radio call came at 3:36 p.m.
"People were everywhere, people running across the service road...just chaos," Williams said.
Williams recalls when he raced to the mall that there was very little information available to first responders at the time. He recalls seeing his fellow fire servicemen and women putting on ballistic vests. Wirstrom was the watch commander on the scene at the time.
"I've seen some horrible things. This [event] will always remain different," Wirstrom said.
More than a month and a half after the shooting, Allen Police had released the body-camera footage from the officer who took down the 33-year-old shooter, Mauricio Garcia. The video showed the officer, who has not been named, one moment casually talking with a family about seatbelt safety in the parking lot of the mall to hearing rapid fire shots. The officer sprang into action.
"He did it exactly right. The officer demonstrated to the world what his character is," Wirstrom said.
Wirstrom tells WFAA the officer did exactly as he's trained in that circumstance: to stop the killing while staying out of the gunman's ambush zone.
"You see him take some tactical pauses because once the gunfire stops and nobody is running ... he doesn't know where to go anymore," Wirstrom said.
That Allen officer who took down Garcia does not want to talk; many first responders understandably do not.
"Before they went in and when I saw them afterwards ... they were completely different people," Williams said. "Everybody is going to carry this with them for the rest of their lives one way or another."
One year later, the families continue to heal and so does the city and its first responders.