I'm a security guard at a mall that's currently dead.

Throwaway because I don't want this linked to my main, where I talk a lot about my job.<br><br>I (23F) work as a security guard at a mall. It's a pretty decent mall as malls go, with a lot of higher end stores and a lot of regular customers. However, this whole Covid-19 panic has caused a significant drop in business for us and many other malls in the country.<br><br>On Friday, the local government announced that all public places were to be shut down until at least the end of the month. This includes malls, movie theaters, gyms, etc. We got the call from our superiors to effectively shut down the mall and only keep a skeleton crew on.<br><br>So now it's just the security team, cleaning crew, and the managers of a few stores who decided to stay. There's only five of us on the security team right now, and this morning when I came in, I noticed one of the big department stores had a sign on the door saying they were staying open until 8pm. That struck me as odd, since they were supposed to close at 6, and the mall itself was closing at 7 to clean up before the curfew started. But hey, I'm security, not management. I figured maybe they just hadn't taken the sign down and forgot since they're staying open to do some extra cleaning.<br><br>Fast forward a bit, it starts getting dark outside and the mall starts looking emptier. We're all doing our rounds, or rather, wandering around and browsing our phones since there's really not much to do. And that's when I notice someone walking towards me from the department store that was staying open late. It's a guy, probably in his late 20s (which is important, because you'll see what happens in a minute) and he's walking around like he owns the place. I stop him and ask him what he's doing, since the mall is closed and he doesn't appear to be an employee.<br><br>He tells me that the manager said he could stay late to help clean up the store, and he's going to go get some food from the food court, which is closed, but I figure the guy is just doing his job. Plus he seems friendly enough, so I let it go and tell him to just be quiet because there's other employees still around.<br><br>About 30 minutes later, I'm walking to one of the corridors to go check the bathrooms, and I notice the guy and one of my coworkers (23F, let's call her T) talking to each other. I recognize her because she's the only other female guard on duty at the time. And that's when it hits me; we didn't tell anyone staying late about the mall closing, and the store the guy was in is closed.<br><br>I get a little suspicious, so I stop and listen in on their conversation. T is asking him what he's doing, and he tells her the same thing he told me. She seems to buy it, or maybe she's just trying to be friendly, and I hear her offering to walk with him to the food court. He agrees and she heads in that direction. I'm about to go follow them when I hear him say "You know, I'm really glad you're the one working tonight. The other guard I talked to was kinda cute and all, but I don't really like younger girls."<br><br>Now, for those who don't know, as the username suggests, I'm 23. T is also 23. There's only one guard on shift tonight who is younger than that; me. In other words, this dude told me he was helping clean up the store, and then told T the same thing, except in the second scenario, he was hitting on her and making it very clear that he was only interested in her because she was older.<br><br>That instantly sets off the alarm bells in my head, and I immediately go find one of my coworkers (28M, let's call him A). I tell him what happened, and we decide to go check up on T and make sure she's alright. We get to the food court, and sure enough, the guy is sitting there with her. When he notices us, I can almost see the panic in his eyes, and he gets up and tells us to stay back. That's when he pulls out a knife and waves it around.<br><br>A and I immediately call for backup and we slowly back away from the guy, trying not to startle him, while T slowly gets up and gets away from him. We manage to get him to leave the food court without anyone getting hurt, and he starts making his way to the entrance. When he realizes that the doors are all locked, he starts screaming that we can't trap him and that he's going to kill us all.<br><br>At this point, the rest of my team has caught up with us, and we all try to surround him to keep him from going after T. He starts waving the knife around, and we all back off slowly, still trying not to startle him. One of my coworkers (43M, let's call him D) slowly makes his way to the security office to call the police.<br><br>In the meantime, the guy starts going into the different stores, looking for an exit. He smashes the windows of three of them and steals some jewelry and clothes. He's still waving the knife around, but he's not really paying attention to us anymore. Eventually, D comes back and tells us the police are on the way. When the guy hears that, he Panics even more and starts destroying property. Luckily, he's not going after us anymore, and we're all able to keep a safe distance away while we wait for the police to show up.<br><br>They finally get here about 20 minutes later, and they manage to subdue the guy without too much of an issue. They ask us if we recognize him, and none of us do. They ask him what his story is, and he tells them that he saw the mall was open and decided to come in and steal some stuff. He said he saw T and hit on her to keep her distracted, and that when I showed up, he realized his cover was blown and panicked.<br><br>But here's the thing; if he saw the mall was open, that means he got there after 7, when we were closing down. And if that's the case, he couldn't have gotten in through the main entrances, because they were all locked down. And the only other way to get in the mall is through a back door that's normally only used by employees to take out the trash.<br><br>In other words, this guy somehow managed to get into the mall through a door that we didn't even know was unlocked, and he knew exactly where to go to get inside one of the more valuable stores. And oh yeah, he just happened to have a knife on him.<br><br>So yeah, guy who snuck into the mall to steal and then tried to kill us when he got caught, let's not meet again.<br><br>EDIT: Just to answer a few questions that are being consistently asked in the comments;<br><br>1. I've lived in this area my whole life, and I don't recognize the guy.<br>2. Yes, we are pressing charges.<br>3. The police are investigating how he got into the mall, and they're looking at the surveillance footage to see if they can find anything.<br>4. Yes, I told my superiors about this, and they're going to talk to the manager of the department store in the morning to see if they really did tell him to stay late.<br><br>EDIT 2: Update; the police finally saw the surveillance footage, and they found out how he got in. There's a storm drain on the side of the mall that's large enough for someone to fit inside. The grate was missing, and they found some scratches on the inside of the pipe that match the guy's boots. They think he might have been living in there, and that he had been using the pipe to get into the mall at night to steal from the stores. They're currently looking into other similar incidents in the area to see if they can connect him to anything else.