No arrests made as police say they are working to identify a suspect and determine a motive for the attack at a neighbourhood street party.
A manhunt is under way after two people were killed and 28 others wounded in a mass shooting at a block party in the city of Baltimore, the latest deadly incident of gun violence in the United States.
The attack took place just after 12:30am (04:30 GMT) on Sunday in the Brooklyn Homes area in the southern part of the city, Richard Worley, the Baltimore Police Department’s acting commissioner, told reporters at the scene.
All victims were adults, including three who are in critical condition. Nine people were transported by ambulance while 20 others walked into area hospitals with gunshot wounds, Worley said.
An 18-year-old woman was killed at the scene and a 20-year-old man was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after.
Hundreds of people gathered in the area for an event called “Brooklyn Day”, a witness told TV station Fox 45, adding they heard 20 to 30 gunshots.
No arrests were made immediately after the shooting. Worley said the police were working to identify a suspect and determine a motive for the shooting.
“This is an extensive crime scene, our detectives are going to be here quite a while,” Worley said.
The shooting comes amid gatherings around the country leading up to the July Fourth holiday. Elsewhere, a shooting in Kansas wounded seven people and two more victims were hospitalized after being trampled as people rushed out of a nightclub early Sunday.
Gunfire ‘going on and on’
Witness Lakell Nelson, 54, said there had been several false alarms of people mistaking the sounds of fireworks for gunfire earlier in the night while she was at the block party. However, by the time she was getting to her car, the actual shooting began.
“The shots were just going on and on and on,” she said.
That is when two young women approached her and said they’d been shot.
“I kinda didn’t believe them at first because they were walking up the street. I said, ‘Show me,’ and the girl was like, ‘I was shot in my butt,’” she said. “When she turned around, I saw the hole through her shorts.”
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, speaking to reporters at the crime scene, condemned the shooting.
“This is an absolute tragedy that did not have to happen,” he said. “It again highlights the impacts and the need to deal with the over-proliferation of illegal guns on our streets and the ability for those who should not have them to get their hands on them.
“We will not stop until we find those cowards who decided to just shoot dozens of people, causing two people to lose their lives.”
With more firearms than inhabitants, the United States has the highest rate of gun deaths of any developed country – at least 44,357 in 2022, including 24,090 suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).
Sunday’s mass shooting was at least the 337th to occur this year, according to the GVA, which defines a “mass shooting” as a gun-related incident in which four or more people are wounded or killed.
The violence comes as federal prosecutors in Baltimore this week touted their efforts to reduce violent crime in the city. Police reported nearly 130 homicides and nearly 300 shootings so far this year, down from the same time last year.
