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Police confirmed the death toll but said they could not confirm how many people were killed in the shooting in the Dallas suburb of Allen.
A gunman has wounded several people at a busy shopping mall in Dallas, leaving an undisclosed death toll.
At least nine injured people, including children, were taken to a hospital in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday, emergency officials said.
The gunman was killed by an officer after he opened fire outside the Allen Outlets mall in the northern Dallas suburb of Allen, police said, and authorities said they believed the shooter acted alone.
“He heard gunshots, walked towards them, engaged the suspect and overpowered the suspect,” the city’s police chief, Brian Harvey, said at a news conference. “He then also called an ambulance.”
Harvey confirmed the deaths but declined to say how many had died, saying “we don’t have an accurate count”.
Allen Fire Chief Jon Boyd said at the same news conference that his department took at least nine gunshot victims to area hospitals. He did not say what happened to the victims, adding that more people may have been injured.
Medical City Healthcare, a Dallas-area hospital system, said in a written statement that it was treating eight people, ages 5 to 61.
Their condition is unknown.
Aerial television images showed hundreds of people calmly walking out of the mall about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Dallas after the violence, many with their hands raised, as dozens of police officers stood guard.
Footage also showed blood on the sidewalk outside the mall and what appeared to be a dead body covered in white sheets.
Fontayne Payton, 35, told The Associated Press he was at the H&M store when he heard gunshots through the headphones he was wearing.
“It was so loud, it sounded like it was outside,” Payton said.
The store dispersed before employees led the group into a fitting room and then a locked back room, he said. When they were allowed to leave, Peyton saw the store’s windows were broken and there was blood on the door. Discarded sandals and blood-stained clothing lay nearby.
Once outside, Peyton saw the body.
“I pray it’s not a child, but it looks like a child,” he said. The body was covered in a white towel and dumped on a bag on the ground, he said.
“When I went out and saw it, I was sad,” he said.
Farther away, he saw the body of a burly man in black. Payton said he thought it was the shooter because, unlike the other bodies, it wasn’t covered up.
Another unidentified witness told local ABC-affiliated WFAA television that the shooter was “walking on the sidewalk … just outside shooting,” and that “he was shooting everywhere most of the time.”
Calling the shooting an “unspeakable tragedy,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a written statement that the state was ready to provide any assistance local authorities might need.
Allen, Texas is a community of approximately 100,000 people.
Mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States, with at least 198 so far in 2023, the most for any given year since at least 2016, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The nonprofit defines a mass shooting as any incident in which four or more people are injured or killed, excluding the shooter.
The United States has the highest gun death rate of any developed country, with 49,000 deaths in 2021, up from 45,000 the year before.
