Shooting at a block party in Baltimore on Sunday killed two people and wounded 28, leaving a sprawling crime scene that marred America’s holiday weekend, police said. Three of the injured are in critical condition.
Baltimore Police Department Acting Commissioner Richard Worley told reporters during a news conference that there were a total of 30 victims.
The shooting took place just after 12:30 a.m. at a party in the Brooklyn Homes area on the south side of the city, Worley said.
The shooting took place amid activities across the country ahead of the July 4 holiday. Elsewhere, a shooting in Kansas left seven people with gunshot wounds and two more hospitalized after being trampled as people ran out of a nightclub early Sunday morning, local police said.
All of the Baltimore victims were adults. Nine were transported by ambulance and 20 walked to area hospitals with injuries from the shooting, Worley said.
An 18-year-old woman was found dead at the scene and a 20-year-old man was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after, police said.
“I want those in charge to hear me and to hear me very clearly,” Mayor Brandon Scott said at the scene. “We won’t stop until we find you, and we will find you. Until then, I hope that with every breath you take, you think of the lives you took, think of the lives you impacted here tonight.”
There were no arrests immediately after the shooting. Scott asked anyone with information to come forward to help investigators track down the “cowards” responsible for the shooting.
Authorities said the crime scene was extensive and it will take detectives a while to work through it.
Hours after the shooting, several officers remained on the scene, working behind police tape amid densely populated two-story apartment blocks. Folding tables and plastic cups were scattered around the scene, apparently left behind as people fled the gunfire.
This week federal prosecutors in Baltimore furthered their efforts to reduce violent crime in the city. Police have reported nearly 130 homicides and nearly 300 shootings so far this year, though that’s fewer than the same period last year.
Authorities have vowed to crack down on repeat violent offenders.
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