Gunfire Is Reported at New Jersey Mall Dozens of police officers responded to the Garden State Plaza Mall in Paramus, N.J., Monday night after shots were reported. A man wearing black and carrying a rifle opened fire at a large northern New Jersey mall on Monday night, prompting hundreds of customers to seek cover and an extensive search for the suspect, officials and witnesses said. There were no injuries in the episode, but reports of shots fired spurred a lockdown and spread fear among the many people who were still at the mall. The shooter had not been caught as of early Tuesday, and officers remained on the scene at Garden State Plaza in Paramus, N.J., late into the night. The mall will be closed on Tuesday, officials said. "Thankfully, there were no injuries reported," Jeanne Baratta, a spokeswoman for the Bergen County executive, said Monday night. Dozens of police officers, including a SWAT team and F.B.I. agents, were called to the mall after shots were reported just before the mall was to close at 9:30 p.m. The police released people from the mall in small groups late on Monday night. Many of the workers from the mall's stores were sent out to the parking lot wearing only short-sleeved uniforms, having left their coats inside. Heavily armored police officers were entering and leaving the mall in groups of six to eight. Many of the stores were dark inside. Fabio Rocha was home in North Bergen, N.J., around 9:15 p.m., he said, when his wife, Maria, called from the mall, saying she had just had a brush with a man with a "big gun." Ms. Rocha had been shopping in Nordstrom when she came face-to-face with a man dressed in black, Mr. Rocha said as he stood outside the mall near midnight waiting for his wife, who was still inside. Ms. Rocha said she turned and ran before getting a clear look at the man's face. When she called her husband, she was frantically trying to find a place to hide, he said. She ended up hiding in a nearby store with two employees, waiting for police to escort them out. Once Mr. Rocha realized that his wife was not playing a prank on him, he said, "I told her to stay there and not move." Ms. Rocha was among many shoppers and workers held inside the mall well past closing time as police officers from all over North Jersey gathered in the parking lots that surround the huge mall. As shoppers and workers trickled out, heavily armed police and federal agents filed in to an entrance between the Nordstrom store and Joe's American Bar and Grill. Several F.B.I. agents donned flak jackets, while dogs from K-9 units barked and pawed at the doors of the cars and trucks they were held in. On Monday night, the local authorities told reporters outside the mall that they had found a single shell casing from a long-arm rifle. The mall, among the state's largest, is about 20 miles northwest of downtown Manhattan. It has about two million square feet of space and more than 250 stores and restaurants and a movie theater. People forced to take cover inside the mall posted to Twitter throughout the night as they waited to be evacuated. One woman, Kathryn Jean Lopez, posted: "Folks are nervous in here please just say a prayer. ... There is screaming. She posted a dark photo from inside the Nordstrom store showing several people seated on the floor checking their phones. Jonathan Astacio, a manager at the Brookstone store at the mall, said he heard what sounded like four gunshots near the store around 9:20 p.m. Mr. Astacio said he saw police officers searching the mall. He and other employees at the store moved into a back stockroom, he said. Alexa Tom, 28, a sales associate who works at Neiman Marcus in the mall, said that she saw security guards running through the store locking down all the doors after 9 p.m. The store's security team brought the more than 50 people left in the store to the first-floor shoe department, where they stayed for about an hour. The security team warned them to stay away from the glass doors in case more shots were fired. She and others in the store were checking Facebook and sending texts in an effort to figure out what was going on. Ms. Tom said the employees and shoppers were then escorted into the stockroom and were patted down by a SWAT team before they were escorted outside by armed officers. "It was like a movie," she said. They had their guns pointed up as they took us - just in case they would need to take action. Meredith Mandell contributed reporting.