Fatal shootings take place in several US cities
Compiled from Dispatches
At least four people were killed and some were wounded in separate shootings in US cities.
One person was killed and another wounded in a shooting at a Black Lives Matter rally in the US state of Kentucky, police said, AFP reported.
The incident Saturday took place at Jefferson Square Park in the center of Louisville where protestors have gathered for weeks over the killing of African-american woman Breonna Taylor.
Authorities were investigating the fatal shooting Saturday night at the park, AP reported.
Taylor’s death in March helped fuel a campaign against racism and police brutality in the United States that has since spread across the globe.
The 26-year-old emergency room technician was shot dead after police barged into her home, alleging that drug dealers had used the apartment to receive packages.
Those protests expanded dramatically after the May 25 killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in Minneapolis after a white police officer pinned his knee to Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes.
Reports of shots fired on Saturday at Jefferson Square Park came in around 9 p.m., Louisville Metro police said in a statement, followed by calls that the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department was performing life-saving measures on a male who died at the scene. Shortly after, police were told of a shooting victim across the street at the Hall of Justice. That person was hospitalized with nonlife-threatening injuries.
Video posted on social media appeared to show a man opening fire into the park as people scrambled for cover. The footage later showed at least one person bleeding profusely on the ground.
Officers cleared the park and police “are trying to gather as much information as possible in order to identify all who were involved in the incident,” the statement said. No information about arrests, possible suspects and the victims’ identities and ages was immediately released.
Before the shooting, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer had urged counter-protesters to stay away from the park, after the local newspaper Louisville Courier Journal reported that “armed patriot groups” were planning on confronting the demonstrators.
Shooting in California
Another shooting took place when a man drove into a Northern California distribution center and started shooting at people, killing an employee and wounding four others before he was killed by police, AP quoted authorities as saying on Sunday.
The shooting by a 31-year-old man with a semi-automatic rifle started about 3:30 p.m. Saturday at the Walmart distribution center south of Red Bluff, a city of about 14,000 people about 131 miles (210 kilometers) north of Sacramento, California.
Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston said at a news conference that the shooter circled the parking lot four times before crashing into the building and opening fire with the rifle. Red Bluff Police officers shot and killed the suspect, KHSL-TV reported.
The employee who died was Martin Haro-lozano, 45, of Orland, California, Johnston said.
Officials did not identify the shooter, but Johnston said he had a history with the Red Bluff workplace.
The shooting victims were taken to St. Elizabeth Community Hospital in Red
Bluff, spokeswoman Allison Hendrickson told The Associated Press. She confirmed that four were hospitalized, but declined to provide more details.
The suspect was shot in the chest about 3:45 p.m., dispatchers said.
Infant killed
Also a one-year-old boy was killed and his mother wounded in a Chicago driveby shooting that has stunned authorities accustomed to rampant gun violence in America’s third-largest city, AFP reported.
The 22-year-old mother was driving home on Saturday afternoon when the attacker pulled up next to her car and fired around eight shots, striking the infant in the chest and grazing her head, police said.
“This is happening far too often,” Chicago police operations Chief Fred Waller told reporters near where the shooting took place in the city’s south. “When is this going to stop? When are we gonna say enough is enough?”
The incident came a week after the shooting death of three-year-old Mekhi James, who died in similar circumstances while traveling in a car with his father on the city’s west side.
“We’ll catch the person that killed that three-year-old. We’ll catch the person who killed this kid,” Waller said.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and police superintendent David Brown asked the city’s residents to speak up if they had information on Saturday’s attack.
“We ALL need to be outraged by the violence we are seeing in our city. This baby, and all of our residents, deserve better,” Brown said.
No arrests have been made and police are continuing to investigate both cases.