4 dead in shooting at business

LOS ANGELES — Four people were killed Wednesday evening in a mass shooting in Orange (Orange County), police said. The officers were fired on as they arrived, and they returned fire, said Lt. Jennifer Amat, a spokeswoman for the Orange Police Department.

Four people, including one child, had been confirmed dead as of Wednesday evening, police said. A fifth person was injured; the extent of his or her injuries wasn’t clear.

Amat said officers received a call about 5:30 p.m. of shots fired and were dispatched to a business at 202 W. Lincoln Avenue in Orange, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The address is a beige, twostory office complex that contains a number of small businesses. A row of large apartment complexes sit across Lincoln Avenue.

The shooter was taken to a hospital in an unknown condition, Amat said. “The situation has been stabilized and there is no threat to the public,” the Orange Police Department said on its Facebook page.

The incident in Orange follows two recent mass shootings that have spurred new calls for gun control measures. Eight people, six of them of Asian descent, were killed earlier this month in a series of shootings at Atlantaarea spas. Six days later, a man opened fire in a supermarket in Boulder, Colo., killing 10.

Nathan Zachary, 18, and his father had been cooking fried chicken for dinner when he saw news of the shooting on social media. They decided to go outside to see what as going on.

“Oh my God, I couldn’t believe it, we are a safe, really safe area, so I had to know what’s going on,” he said.

Rep. Katie Porter, DIrvine, said on Twitter: “I’m deeply saddened by reports of a mass shooting in Orange County, and I’m continuing to keep victims and their loved ones in my thoughts as we continue to learn more.”

Until the shooting in Atlanta, it had been a year since there had been a largescale shooting in a public place, according to the Violence Project.