Horror scenes have played out in Florida overnight, where three shooters fired “indiscriminately” into a crowd outside a concert. Two people were killed and at least 20 wounded overnight when three shooters fired “indiscriminately” into a crowd outside a show in the Miami area, police said. The latest shooting in a year has seen a surge in gun sales and gun violence in the US. The shots erupted near a banquet and events hall in a strip mall in Miami Gardens, a heavily Cuban community of working-class families. Angelica Green told reporters at the scene that her son and nephew, both 24, were among those wounded. Both were in the hospital recovering, though the nephew, hit four times, was in more serious condition.
She had spoken to her son, who was “frantic” when he called right after the shooting.
“They say that some guys came out with hoodies and ski masks and just started spraying at the crowd,” she said, adding that it was “terrifying.”
The venue was “hosting a scheduled event, and several patrons were standing outside,” Miami-Dade Police Department said in a statement.
When a Nissan Pathfinder SUV approached the scene, police added, “Three subjects exited the vehicle and began shooting indiscriminately into the crowd.”
The trio fled. Their motive was unknown.
On Sunday, about a dozen small yellow cones could be seen on the street outside the hall, marking where bullet casings and evidence were found.
In addition to the two people killed at the scene, at least 20 people were hospitalized, one in critical condition, police said. In a tweet, the department’s director, Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez III, condemned the “cowardly act of gun violence.” “These are cold-blooded murderers that shot indiscriminately into a crowd, and we will seek justice,” he said.
Police were seeking help from the community to find the shooters.
43,000 gun-related deaths
Florida remains marked by the 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, in which a gunman killed 49 people, many of them young Cuban Americans.
And over the past year, gun-related homicides have surged nationwide. On Wednesday, a public transit worker shot nine people at a California rail yard before turning his gun on himself.
A search this week of the shooter’s home — which was set ablaze shortly before the attack — turned up 12 guns, some 22,000 rounds of ammunition, and suspected Molotov cocktails.
That followed recent mass shootings in Indiana, California, Colorado, and Georgia.
While the coronavirus pandemic slowed workplace violence, it saw record gun sales as more people stayed home. In March last year, the number of weekly federal background checks on gun buyers surpassed one million for the first time, the New York Times reported. Then this spring, the number hit 1.2 million in one week, with many sales going to first-time owners.
The United States has a long, painful history of gun violence — a problem President Joe Biden has branded an “epidemic.” According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were more than 43,000 gun-related deaths in the country last year. Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo issued an impassioned plea Sunday for action. “If we don’t fully mobilize as a society against it,” he said on Twitter, “it will get worse before it gets better.
