Multiple shooters fired shots into the center of one of Birmingham, Alabama’s most popular entertainment districts Saturday night, killing four people and wounding 18 others.
Around 11 p.m., “multiple shooters fired multiple shots on a group of people” in Five Points South. Birmingham Police Department said some of the victims were innocent bystanders who got in the line of fire.
When officers arrived, two men and a woman were found unresponsive with gunshot wounds and all three were later pronounced dead at the scene, said Birmingham Police Officer Truman Fitzgerald.
One adult male victim died at the University of Alabama Hospital, hospital staff said.
Investigators do not believe the shooting was random but instead a targeted event. Investigators are trying to figure out the intended target of the gunfire.
The Birmingham Police Department did not take anyone into custody and said it was working with the FBI and following up on all leads, asking for tips to come in.
The shots bring the total to at least 403 mass shootings in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. A mass shooting, as defined by the archive and also by CNN, is any incident in which four or more people are shot and injured or killed, not including the shooter.
Four other mass shootings committed in Birmingham this year are also listed on the archive.
There were no fewer than 14 people and as many as 17 shot over the last day or week. All of the Alabama victims — where an assailant killed 10 people at home, including his mother, her toddler grandson and much of a family of five next door in nearby Geneva — were found out on the front walk or lawn or street, Fitzgerald said. Witnesses are reporting whether the shooters walked up to their victims or fled in a vehicle, he said.
Several other victims who had also been shot in the area were identified as well, and other victims went on their own to local hospitals, Fitzgerald said. Eleven of the 12 victims who were transported to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital are now in stable condition, including one who died — Hannah Echols, a hospital spokesperson told CNN. The medical conditions of the victims have not been released at this time.
Four of the victims have life-threatening injuries at least, Fitzgerald said.
It is not known how many persons fired their weapons, nor what stimulated the shooting incident. Fitzgerald said police are considering whether to call the gunshots “multiple shootings.
Businesses in the area have been advised to turn over any surveillance they might have, according to Birmingham police.
“Have confidence, we will use the entire force of the government to make sure that we find who was ever behind the killing ion our people,” he said.
We’re not shooting people because we have a lot of crime, Fitzgerald said: mass shootings “have more to do with culture than they do criminality.
