Birthday party turns into bloodbath as seven shot dead

A man fatally shot six people including his girlfriend before turning the gun on himself at a birthday party in Colorado Springs, Colorado state, but did not fire on traumatised children who were present inside a mobile home at a trailer park.

Police arrived to find six people dead plus a seventh who was seriously wounded and died after being taken to a hospital.

“The suspect, a boyfriend of one of the female victims, drove to the residence, walked inside and began shooting people at the party before taking his own life,” the Colorado Springs Police Department said.

“Friends, family, and children were gathered inside the trailer to celebrate when the shooting occurred.”

A motive has yet to be determined.

The shooting happened in the Canterbury Manufactured Home Community, a mobile home park of some 470 trailers and largely

Latino residents on the southeast side of town, about 110km south of Denver.

The massacre was the latest in a resurgence of mass shootings in the country after such occurrences seemed to recede during the height of coronavirus pandemic restrictions.

Among the incidents this year was one in Boulder, Colorado, where a 21-year-old man has been charged with killing 10 people in a March 22 shooting spree at a supermarket about 50km northwest of Denver. That came less than a week after another 21-year-old gunman was accused of killing eight people at three Atlanta-area day spas.

Colorado was also the state where two other deadly rampages took place: the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School that killed 15 people including the two perpetrators, and the 2012 shooting in an Aurora cinema that killed 12 people.

The recent shootings have revived the gun control debate, with President Joe Biden calling them a “national embarrassment”.