Three dead after shooting at party
Parents were last night rushing to the scene of a shooting at what was thought to be a high school party in the US state of Washington.
Officials said the shooting left three dead and another person hurt in Mukilteo, Washington, about 40 kilometres north of Seattle, and that a suspect had been taken into custody.
More than 20 shots were understood to have been fired in the incident.
The injured person was taken to hospital, city authorities said via twitter. Police did not immediately release additional details about the shooting or the suspect.
The city says a reunification centre has been established at a church for parents and relatives.
Earlier in the day, a man suspected of opening fire on two San Diego police officers, killing one and severely wounding the other, has been arrested and charged with murder after a gunfight that left the accused gunman hospitalised. A second man was arrested on an outstanding warrant near a house that a police SWAT team had surrounded yesterday in the aftermath of Friday’s gun battle, but whether he was connected with the shooting was still under investigation, police said.
The two officers, members of the department’s anti-gang unit, were shot moments after stopping at least one person in a high-crime neighbourhood of southeastern San Diego, Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman said.
But the precise circumstances of the shooting and what precipitated the incident remained unclear, in part because one of the two officers involved was dead and the other was hospitalised and had yet to be questioned, she said.
The shooting came as police departments across the United States have been on high alert in the wake of fatal ambushes of law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas earlier this month, which left a total of eight officers dead.
She identified the slain officer as Jonathan DeGuzman, a 16-yearveteran of the force, who was married and the father of two young children.
‘‘I worked with him,’’ she said. ‘‘I know him. He talked about his children every day.’’
The wounded officer, nine-year veteran Wade Irwin, was in a serious condition but was expected to survive, Zimmerman said.
She said it was not clear whether the officers had made a traffic stop or a pedestrian stop when the shooting began.
The accused gunman, identified as Jesse Michael Gomez, 52, has been charged with murder and attempted murder.
No charges had been filed against the second man arrested, aged 41, police said. Unlike sniper attacks on police that killed five officers on July 7 in Dallas and three more July 18 in Baton Rouge, there was no immediate overt indication that the police in San Diego were targeted for attack or that there were racial overtones.
The gunmen in Louisiana and Texas, both military veterans, apparently acted in retaliation for the high-profile deaths of a number of black men at the hands of police.
The confrontations have heightened racial tensions in the US and given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said in a Twitter post in response to the San Diego shooting: ‘‘It is only getting worse. People want law and order!’’