Police said the shooting happened Saturday afternoon at a crowded shopping plaza on South Orlando Drive near Walmart.
SANFORD, FL — Two people were injured Saturday after an argument at a Sanford barbershop turned into a fight and gunfire outside the business at a busy shopping plaza, police said, sending officers and worried shoppers rushing toward the scene in the middle of the afternoon.
Authorities said both injured people are expected to survive, including a person police identified as the suspected shooter. The violence unfolded at the Seminole Centre Shopping Plaza on South Orlando Drive, a heavily visited commercial stretch that was crowded with weekend customers. Investigators said the shooting appears to have been an isolated incident, but by late Saturday night they had not announced any arrests or released the names of the people involved. The case remained active Sunday, with police still working to pin down the sequence of events, who fired the shots and whether additional charges will follow.
Police said officers were called about 2:30 p.m. Saturday to the 3600 block of South Orlando Drive after reports of a shooting outside a barbershop in the plaza. When officers arrived, they found one person outside the business with what appeared to be a gunshot wound. That person was taken to a local hospital with injuries police said were not life-threatening. Authorities later learned that a second wounded person had shown up at another hospital. Police said those injuries also were not life-threatening. By Saturday evening, investigators said both people were expected to recover. The shooting happened outside a barbershop next to Walmart in the Seminole Centre plaza, a location surrounded by stores, parked cars and steady foot traffic on weekends. Witnesses described a sudden burst of chaos in an area where customers had been walking in and out of nearby businesses only moments earlier.
Brenda Vizcaino, the owner of the barbershop, said the trouble started inside her business when a group that included three men and a woman got into a loud verbal dispute. She said barbers working in the shop moved quickly to push the group outside because customers were still inside and the situation looked as if it could get worse. Vizcaino said two of the men went outside first and another followed before the confrontation became physical. She said the fight then escalated in front of the shop and shots were fired. Witnesses nearby said they heard two gunshots. One witness recorded cellphone video that appeared to show two men struggling over a handgun while a woman stood nearby. In the video, another man approaches, then several people suddenly scatter. A car identified by witnesses as a BMW was seen speeding away. Police have not publicly confirmed how many shots were fired, who was armed at each point in the struggle or whether the people seen leaving in the car remain persons of interest.
The setting added to the alarm. The Seminole Centre Shopping Plaza is one of the best-known retail stops along U.S. 17-92 in Sanford, and the barbershop sits near a Walmart that draws heavy weekend traffic. Families, shoppers and employees from nearby stores were in the area when the shooting happened. Vizcaino said her workers had acted to protect customers by getting the arguing group out of the shop before the violence reached a worse point inside. She said those seconds may have prevented others from being hurt. Even so, she said she was shaken by how close the gunfire came to the storefront and by the possibility that a bullet could have struck someone inside. The witness video and the accounts from people in the plaza suggest a struggle continued after the shots, raising questions about whether someone tried to disarm the shooter or stop more gunfire. Investigators had not answered those questions publicly by Sunday.
Police have described the case as an isolated incident, language departments often use when they believe the violence grew from a specific dispute rather than a random attack on the public. That distinction may calm some fears for shoppers, but it does not settle the key questions in the investigation. Detectives still must determine who brought the gun to the confrontation, whether the shooting was intentional or happened during the struggle, and whether anyone else helped those involved leave the plaza. Officers also have not said whether surveillance cameras from the plaza, the barbershop or nearby stores captured the confrontation from start to finish. In a commercial center with multiple businesses and constant vehicle traffic, video evidence could become central to the case. Police also have not said whether any of the people involved knew one another before the argument inside the barbershop or what sparked the dispute in the first place. Those details are likely to shape any future criminal charges.
What comes next will likely depend on interviews, video review and forensic work. Investigators typically try to match shell casings, recover any firearm involved and compare witness statements with footage from businesses and bystanders. As of Sunday, police had not announced charges, filed an arrest affidavit or set any court appearance tied to the shooting. They also had not released the identities, ages or hometowns of the injured people. If detectives conclude that one of the wounded men fired the gun, charges could come after he is medically cleared and formally interviewed. If prosecutors decide the shooting happened during a mutual fight or while multiple people struggled over the weapon, that could complicate the legal picture. For now, police have said only that the investigation remains ongoing. Any next public milestone is likely to be an arrest announcement, a written probable-cause affidavit or a follow-up statement from Sanford police laying out a fuller timeline of how the argument inside the shop turned into gunfire outside.
For people who were there, the most vivid part of the day was how fast an ordinary shopping trip changed. Witnesses described hearing loud noises, turning toward the barbershop and seeing people run. Some watched officers flood the plaza soon after the shots. Others focused on the cellphone video, which appeared to capture the confusion after the gunfire, with one man trying to control the weapon and another person moving in before everyone broke apart. Vizcaino said she was proud of her employees for stepping in when the argument first grew heated. Her account cast the workers not as bystanders but as the first people trying to stop the dispute from putting customers in danger. The scene they faced outside, however, was far harder to control. By nightfall, police tape was gone, but the questions left behind were not: what began as an argument, who pulled the trigger, and how close the plaza came to a much deadlier outcome on a crowded Saturday afternoon.
As of Sunday, both injured people were expected to recover and investigators had said the shooting was isolated. Sanford police had not announced arrests or charges. The next major development is expected to come when detectives identify the shooter publicly or file charges tied to the confrontation at the shopping plaza.
Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.