Shooting in Sacramento: dead, injured, arrested and Police report
At least six people died and at least ten were injured in an early-morning shooting in Sacramento, California, the city's police department said on Twitter.
At least six people are dead and ten others were injured in a shooting in Sacramento, California, police said Sunday.
Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester said at about 2 a.m. (local time), officers in the busy downtown area heard gunshots.
She described a "crowd" at the scene before the shooting. "We don't know if it was coming from a nightclub or a party," she said.
"We have been able to confirm that six people were killed and ten others were hospitalised" as a result of the shooting, she told a press conference, without giving any information about the circumstances of the tragedy.
"We are asking the public to help us identify suspects and to provide any information that would allow us to shed light on this case. The police said they had not yet made any arrests, as the area around the scene of the shooting remained at risk. The authorities have urged residents to avoid the area, which is cordoned off and has a heavy police presence.
Videos posted on social media show people running in panic down the street as the sound of gunfire is heard.
"It was horrible," Berry Accius, a community activist who arrived at the scene minutes after the shooting, told local station KXTV.
He described "victims covered in blood, people screaming, crying, others asking where their brother was or mothers trying to identify their son.
"It's hard to imagine the number of dead and wounded," commented the city's mayor, Darrell Steinberg.
US shootings
According to the Small Arms Survey, in 2017 there were about 393 million guns in the US, more than the population.
The right to own guns is guaranteed by the US Constitution.
Several initiatives by elected officials to strengthen gun legislation have failed in Congress, where the powerful NRA gun lobby wields strong influence.
"The rise in gun violence is the scourge of our city, our state and our nation, and I support all measures to reduce it," said Steinberg.
Since the beginning of 2022, the Gun Violence Archive has counted more than 10,700 gun deaths in the US, including suicides. Over the entire year 2021, the number is 45,000 deaths, according to the same site.