Coverage in The News & Observer and elsewhere compared the mall melee to recent violence at other Triangle shopping centers.

But there's another mall attack in North Raleigh's history that overshadows them all: a senseless, fatal shooting spree at the former North Hills Mall.

For you relative newcomers, that's what existed before John Kane's ritzy redevelopment at Six Forks Road and the Beltline.

When North Hills Mall opened in 1967 -- then on Raleigh's northern edge -- it was the first enclosed mall between Atlanta and Washington. One of its biggest selling points was air conditioning.

Flashier Crabtree Valley Mall's opening five years later in a flood-prone pasture put pressure on its pioneering predecessor.

That same year, on Memorial Day, workers were enjoying holiday shopping and U.S. Sen. Everett Jordan was campaigning for re-election at the mall.

For reasons known only to him, a 23-year-old Broughton High School janitor named Harvey McLeod drove to the mall's parking lot shortly after noon, toting a .22-caliber rifle. McLeod parked, walked between two cars, stood up -- and starting shooting at shoppers near the entrance.

Tragically, he was a good shot.

One woman dropped dead at the front door as a stranger held it for her. Another victim slumped over on a bus-stop bench.

At first, some shoppers thought the popping was holiday fireworks or a car backfiring.

In an era before mall security officers and off-duty police paid to patrol private property, McLeod kept shooting. And shooting.

Screaming shoppers fled inside the mall and scattered.

Even the three-term senator had to duck and run for cover.

(It was a bad year for Jordan. Soon after the shooting rampage, he was upset in a party primary by a fellow Democrat who went on to lose that fall to Republican challenger Jesse Helms.)

In the end, McLeod killed four people -- one died days later -- and injured seven others.

Then, as the sound of emergency sirens could be heard approaching North Hills, McLeod turned the gun on himself and fired his final fatal shot.

Though the attack occurred before mass murder at shopping centers became a national phenomenon, it remains the worst massacre in the Capital City's history.

That mall is gone, replaced.

Those memories are not.

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