In the early morning hours of September 30, 2015, Forest Acres Police Officer Gregory Thomas Alia, 32, responded with two other officers to a report of a suspicious person in the Richland Mall parking lot in Columbia, South Carolina. The officers found 34-year-old Jarvis Hall inside a van. When Hall ran into the mall, Officer Alia pursued him. A struggle followed and Hall produced a stolen .40 caliber handgun, fatally shooting Officer Alia. Alia, a seven-year department veteran, husband and father of a 6-month-old son, was taken to hospital and died of his wounds.

Hall was apprehended at the scene and found to be armed with the handgun and a knife; the handgun was later determined to be stolen. He was charged with murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime and had prior arrests involving multiple weapons. On May 9, 2017, Jarvis Hall pleaded guilty to the murder of Officer Gregory Alia and was sentenced to life in prison without parole; he apologized to the Alia family at sentencing.

Did anyone in the Richland Mall area that morning see the events leading up to the struggle or Hall entering the mall?