Movie shooting victim angry over treatment by theater workers

Michelle Mallari was sitting in her seat inside the Regal Cinema in Renton, on a date night last week with her longtime boyfriend, Richard Arreola.

"I just couldn't believe it happened to me."

Her boyfriend's hand in hers, 40-year-old Mallari described her bewilderment when the unthinkable happened.

"My ear started ringing," she said.  "It started to hurt here. And my right arm went up and I couldn't put it down."

Arreola was asked if he heard anything.  "Just  a loud bang.  And then she started saying ‘Ow, Ow’ on her shoulder, started pointing to her shoulder.  So I automatically knew I had to get her out of there."

What they didn't know was that another moviegoer's gun had gone off, the bullet struck Mallari's shoulder. By the time they made it to the lobby, the shooter had left the theater.  Arreola says he yelled to theater workers to help but they didn't move.

>> 5 things to know about Renton movie theater shooting 

"They just stood there," he said.

"Stood there," repeated Mallari.

They said the workers kept asking  "What happened?"

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"Looked at me," said Mallari. "He said I'd been shot and just walked me over to the bench."

As Mallari lay bleeding, someone stuffed readmission tickets in Arreola's back pocket.

"What is this? What is this?" he said he asked the worker.

"It's a voucher," he was told.

Instead, they believe the workers should have evacuated the theater.

"You get them to a safe zone or something," said Arreola.  "Away.  Away from the danger area."

He also thinks they should have a security system.

"Anything they can do to keep guns out of that theater," he said. "Metal detectors, whatever they can do."

KIRO 7 tried reaching Regal Theater for comment.  But no one called back.

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