Global Courant 2023-04-16 23:05:31
Four people were killed and several others injured in a Saturday night shooting related to a birthday party in the small town of Dadeville, Ala., the state’s law enforcement agency said.
“We will continue to work in a very methodical way to go through this scene, to look at the facts and make sure that justice is done to the families,” said Sgt. Jeremy Burkett of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency told a news conference Sunday morning.
The shooting occurred at approximately 10:34 p.m. CT on Saturday, the agency said. Officials gave no information about what prompted the shooting and it was not known if any suspects had been apprehended.
Raymond Porter, superintendent of Tallapoosa County Schools, said at the news conference that counseling would be provided at schools in the area on Monday, and asked local clergy to help families through the situation.
“We will do everything we can to comfort those children and not lose sight of the fact that they are most affected by this situation,” Porter said.
The FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Fifth Circuit District Attorney’s Office had also been on the scene and assisted in the investigation, according to a press release from the state’s law enforcement agency.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said in a Twitter post Sunday morning that she was being “closely updated” by law enforcement as the details emerged.
“This morning I grieve with the people of Dadeville and my fellow Alabamans,” she wrote in the post. “Violent crime has NO place in our state.”
The shooting came within weeks of two high-profile mass shootings in the nearby states of Tennessee and Kentucky, prompting local leaders to call for tougher gun control measures last week.
A bank employee shot dead five colleagues and wounded nine other people at his workplace in Louisville, Ky., on Monday. On March 27, three nine-year-olds and three staff members were murdered at a private Christian school in Nashville by a former student.
Mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were more than 146 to date in 2023, the most at this point in the year since 2016. The nonprofit defines a mass shooting as four or more people injured or killed in a shooting, not counting the shooter.
