The city of Baltimore is in mourning. At least two people were killed and 28 others injured by shootings during a block party in this city american on the night of Saturday July 1 to Sunday July 2, police said.
Law enforcement received calls reporting shooting shortly after midnight (04:00 GMT Sunday), their chief, Rich Worley, said at a press conference. “Upon arriving at the scene, the police found many people who had been shot,” he added.
An 18-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man were killed, and some of the injured are in critical condition, Rich Worley said. The victims are between 13 and 32 years old.
The shootings occurred during a street party in a popular area of Baltimore, a city known for its high crime rate. The circumstances of the tragedy remain unclear, and the authorities have not yet identified a motive or a suspect. They do know, however, that “more than one person was shooting,” said the police chief during a second press briefing in the afternoon.
The crime scene is “very large”, on several streets, which complicates the work of the investigators, he added.
Recurring killings
Brandon Scott, mayor of the city, judged for his part that it was “a tragedy that should never have happened”. “This again highlights the consequences of the proliferation of illegal firearms on our streets and the need to combat this,” he said.
‘We won’t stop until we find these cowards who have decided to shoot dozens of people, killing two,’ pledged the Democrat, who campaigned on a promise to reduce violence by firearm.
Authorities have called on residents to report any information about the shootings to the police. “Act like your daughter, son, brother or cousin is in there and shot,” Brandon Scott asked.
Baltimore, where the famous dark series “On the Wire” took place, is struggling to shed its violent image. This city of 575,000 inhabitants, very close to the capital Washington, has one of the highest homicide rates in the country.
The United States pays a very heavy price for the spread of firearms in its territory and the ease with which Americans have access to them. Some 44,357 people died of it in 2022, of which 24,090 committed suicide, according to the specialized site Gun Violence Archive. The country has more individual weapons than inhabitants: one in three adults owns at least one weapon and nearly one in two adults lives in a home where there is a weapon.
Recent American history is punctuated by killings, without any place of daily life seeming safe, from the company to the church, from the supermarket to the discotheque, from the public highway to public transport. At the beginning of May, a man had opened fire in a Dallas-area mallkilling eight people and injuring several others before being shot himself.
With AFP
2023-07-03 04:32:27
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