Couple’s Fight At Chili’s Causes Mall Evacuation, Highway Closure

A couple’s raucous fight at a Nashville Chili’s caused such a commotion that the entire mall where the restaurant is located was evacuated and the adjacent highway was closed in both directions.

Police were called to the Opry Mills Mall on Saturday due to reports of gunshots fired, and eventually had the entire place cleared out while they investigated. The Tennessee Department of Transportation closed down the highway exits to the mall for the next several hours, even after police said there was no evidence that any shots were fired.

Witnesses say there was panic as people sprinted out of the mall, reporting gunshots.

“We were sitting on the little swings over there, right past the food court, and everybody started running and I’m like, ‘What’s going on?,’” a witness named Ladonte described to a local news station. “And I see them on their walkie and he’s like, ‘Oh, they’re shooting! You need to get out! Run, run!’ So we just start running this way, and the people that were coming in, I just told them, ‘Come on out because they’re shooting up in there!’”

Another woman said she was checking out at the Bass Pro Shop when people came running through yelling, “Code Red, Code Red, everybody’s gotta go.”

A man named Andrew Margerison was at a restaurant near the Chili’s and told a local news station he was convinced he heard seven gunshots.

“We were in like the first row of tables by O’Charley’s, which was right by the entry between TGI Friday’s and Applebee’s, so the first thing that was weird is there was kind of a small group of people that kind of hurried out from, we think, Applebee’s, but definitely down that corridor that leads out from in between the restaurants, and then, all of a sudden, we heard a distinctive seven pops,” he told the local station.

Nashville police say it was really just an angry girlfriend whose boyfriend worked at Chili’s. The public interest officer Kris Mumford says he believes people mistook plates crashing to the ground in the casual dining chain restaurant as gunshots.

“A female reportedly came into the restaurant and assaulted her boyfriend who was working there, the fight spilled outside, and that led to the calls of shots fired as people started to flee the mall or shelter in place,” the local news reported. “Mumford said the victim of the fight at Chili’s is safe, but detectives are still looking into the initial assault and whether or not weapons were involved.”

This is the second time in recent years that a false alarm of a shooting caused a mass exodus at the mall, which is attached to the famed Grand Ole Opry music hall. In December 2023, a fallen chair during a fight between two teenagers was mistaken for a gunshot, and the mall was cleared by law enforcement.