Global Courant 2023-04-17 06:34:18
A shooting at a “Sweet 16” birthday party in the United States left at least four dead and 28 injured, according to police and media.
The gun attack in the small town of Dadeville, Alabama, occurred late Saturday night, authorities said Sunday.
There was no official word on what led up to the violence.
During two press conferences on Sunday, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Sergeant Jeremy Burkett took no questions. He did not say whether a suspect was in custody or whether detectives were aware of any motivation. He did not give the names of the dead.
“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 served to the families,” he said.
The Montgomery Advertiser newspaper reported that one of the four people killed in the violence was a high school football player who was one of those present at his sister’s “Sweet 16” birthday party when a gunman opened fire.
The paper, citing the victim’s grandmother, identified the slain teen as Philstavious “Phil” Dowdell, who she said was due to graduate in weeks and planned to attend Jacksonville State University on a football scholarship.
“He was a very, very humble kid. Never messed with anyone. Always had a smile on his face,” Anette Allen told the paper, calling it “a million-dollar smile.”
Dowdell’s mother was among those injured in the shooting.
“Everyone is mourning,” Allen said.
‘Our heart hurts’
The party was held at the Mahogany Masterpiece Dance Studio, converted from an old bank building about half a block from City Hall in Dadeville, a town of about 3,200 people. The crime scene had been cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape on Sunday.
Keenan Cooper, the DJ at the party, told WBMA-TV that the party was briefly halted when attendees heard someone had a gun. He said people with guns were asked to leave, but no one left.
Cooper said when shooting started an hour later, some people hid under a table where he was standing, and others ran out.
Pastor Jason Whetstone, who leads the Christian Faith Fellowship, said the granddaughter of one of his church members was shot in the foot on Sunday and underwent surgery.
“Our hearts are all aching right now. We’re just trying to work together to find strength and comfort,” Whetstone said before an interfaith vigil in the parking lot of First Baptist Church.
The bloodshed in Alabama marked the third high-profile mass shooting in as many weeks in the southern US, following separate outbreaks of deadly gun violence in Tennessee and Kentucky that led local leaders to demand tougher gun control measures.
Dadeville itself was rocked by at least one previous mass shooting in August 2016, when a gunman injured five people during a party at an American Legion hall, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.
“What happened to our country if children can’t go to a birthday party without fear?” President Joe Biden said in a statement on Sunday.
Biden called rising gun violence in the US “outrageous and unacceptable” and urged the US Congress to pass laws to make gun manufacturers more accountable for gun violence, ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, and secure storage of firearms and ammunition to demand. background checks for gun sales.
Raymond Porter, Superintendent of Schools in Tallapoosa County, said counseling would be conducted in area schools on Monday, asking 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 Dadeville killings came five days after a bank employee shot and killed five colleagues and wounded nine other people at his workplace in Louisville, Kentucky.
On March 27, three nine-year-olds and three staff members were murdered at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, by a former student.
Mass shootings have become commonplace in the US, with more than 163 to date in 2023, the most at this point in the year since at least 2016, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The nonprofit defines a mass shooting as a shooting that leaves four or more people injured or killed, not counting the shooter.
