Police in California are searching for at least one suspect in connection with a mass shooting in downtown Sacramento that killed six people and left 12 injured.
Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester said at a news conference that police were patrolling the area two blocks from the Capitol on Sunday at about 2 a.m. when they heard gunfire and rushed to the scene. They found a large crowd gathered and six people dead in the street.
Twelve people who police said were shot and wounded were taken to hospital. The Sacramento Fire Department said four of the seven people transported by its emergency workers were suffering from critical injuries. Authorities said some gunshot victims drove themselves to hospital or were driven.
Authorities recovered "at least one firearm" from the scene, a police statement said, and urged witnesses or anyone with recordings of the shooting to contact police.
"We're asking for the public's help in helping us to identify the suspects in this," Lester said. Asked if authorities were searching for one suspect or more than one, Lester told reporters that she did not know.
Investigators were reviewing videos from social media that appeared to show an altercation before the deadly incident, the police statement said.
"We are currently working to determine what, if any, relation these events have to the shooting," the department said in the statement.
Shortly after the shooting, video was posted on Twitter that showed people running through the street amid the sound of rapid gunfire in the city of about 525,000 people, located 120 kilometres from San Francisco. Video showed multiple ambulances at the scene.
Residents were asked to avoid the area, which is packed with restaurants and bars that lead to the Golden 1 Center, where the Sacramento Kings play basketball.
Witness accounts
Kelsey Schar, 18, was staying on the fourth floor of the Citizen Hotel when she said she heard gunshots and saw flashes in the dark. She walked to the window and "saw a guy running and just shooting," Schar told The Associated Press in an interview.
Her friend, Madalyn Woodard, 17, said she saw a crowd in the street scatter amid the gunfire. She said she saw a girl who appeared to have been shot in the arm lying on the ground. Security guards from a nearby nightclub rushed to help the girl with what looked like napkins to try to stanch the bleeding.
Ten ambulances and 50 first responders from the Sacramento Fire Department responded to the shooting, according to Capt. Keith Wade.
The department took seven people who had gunshot wounds to hospitals, some of them with life-threatening injuries, he said.
Gun violence
Sunday's violence was the third time in the United States this year that at least six people were killed in a mass shooting, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University in Boston. It was also the second mass shooting in Sacramento in the last five weeks.
On Feb. 28, a father killed his three daughters, a chaperon and himself in a church during a weekly supervised visitation. David Mora, 39, was armed with a homemade semiautomatic rifle-style weapon, though he was under a restraining order that barred him from possessing a firearm.
Council member Katie Valenzuela, who represents the area where the shooting happened, said she's fielded phone calls reporting many violent incidents in her district in the 15 months she's been in office.
Valenzuela cried at a news conference as she told reporters that the latest phone call woke her up at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday with details about the latest tragedy.
"I'm heartbroken and I'm outraged," she said. "Our community deserves better than this."
At the news conference, Sacramento Mayor Darrxjmtzywell Steinberg decried rising gun violence and said city officials would support the victims. He said the city has worked hard to attract people back to its downtown since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and that despite the shooting, the city was safe.
"This morning our city has a broken heart," Steinberg said. "This is a senseless and unacceptable tragedy."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that his administration was working closely with law enforcement.
"What we do know at this point is that another mass casualty shooting has occurred, leaving families with lost loved ones, multiple individuals injured and a community in grief," he said.
The area where Sunday's shooting occurred is packed with restaurants and bars. Nightclubs close at 2 a.m., and it's normal for streets to be full of people at that hour.
Missing loved ones
Kay Harris, 32, said she was asleep when one of her family members called to say they thought her brother had been killed. She said she thought he had been at the London nightclub, which is near the shooting.
Harris said she has been to the club a few times and described it as a place for "the younger crowd." She spent the morning circling the block waiting for news.
"Very much so a senseless, violent act," she said.
Pamela Harris, Sergio Harris's mother, told the Sacramento Bee that the family has not heard from him yet.
"We just want to know what happened to him," Pamela Harris told the newspaper. "Not knowing anything is just hard to face."
Berry Accius, a community activist, said he came to the scene shortly after the shooting took place.
"The first thing I saw was, like, victims. I saw a young girl with a whole bunch of blood in her body, a girl taking off glass from her, a young girl screaming saying, 'They killed my sister.' A mother running up, 'Where's my son, has my son been shot?'" he said.
UC Davis Medical Center received four patients from the downtown shooting, spokesperson Stephanie Winn said. She declined to provide their genders or conditions, referring the media to police.
