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FBI to analyze recording of Crabtree Valley 'gunfire'

Investigators are still trying to determine what caused a panic at a Raleigh shopping mall last weekend, and the FBI will now be assisting in that effort, police said Thursday.

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RALEIGH, N.C. — Investigators are still trying to determine what caused a panic at a Raleigh shopping mall last weekend, and the FBI will now be assisting in that effort, police said Thursday.

The Raleigh Police Department has submitted a recording of sounds that people thought was gunfire inside Crabtree Valley Mall on Saturday afternoon to an FBI laboratory for analysis. There's no timeframe for when the analysis will be complete, police said.

Twenty-one people were injured in the chaos as shoppers and workers ran from the food court area, including 12 who had to be taken to local hospitals, according to Wake County EMS officials.

Police never found a gunman, any wounded victims or even shell casings after hours of searching.

"There continues to be neither an indication that a gunshot was fired at Crabtree Valley Mall on Saturday, August 13, nor a means to definitively rule out that possibility," the police department said in a statement Thursday.

Investigators have talked to 911 callers and others who believed they may have seen someone with a firearm or someone who was acting suspiciously, and those interviews led police to rule out those sightings as being related to the sound that was heard.

Holes in a ceiling at the mall that some people thought were bullet holes have been examined, police said, and each has been determined to not be a bullet hole.

Police also have reviewed security video from the mall, and stores have been canvassed by an officer or a detective.

No one who was detained during the response to the incident has been found to have played a role in creating the sound, police said.

Anyone with information about the incident who hasn't yet spoken to a detective is asked to call the police department’s tip line at 919-834-HELP.

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