At least six gunned down in California, suspects at large

Six people were killed and 12 injured in an early morning shooting on a Sacramento, California, street busy with revellers, and police said they are still searching for suspects with no one in custody.A video posted online showed people scuffling in the street, then starting to run as gunfire can be heard.AFP could not verify the footage, and it was not known if there was a direct relation, but local police said they were aware of the video.“We are asking for the public’s help in helping us to identify the suspects in this and provide any information they can to help us solve this,” Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester told reporters.The shooting occurred about 2am PT (0900 GMT), Lester said, near the Golden 1 Centre, an arena where the Sacramento Kings basketball team plays and concerts take place.Police said in a statement that they had recovered “at least” one firearm at the scene and had located 12 victims “with varying degrees of injuries”.Police released no details on the ages or identities of the victims.The Sacramento Bee newspaper reported broken glass and police investigation markers were strewn over two blocks.Pictures from the scene showed at least 28 such markers in a small area at the rear of an SUV.Markers can be used by investigators to locate items of potential interest, such as shell casings.The San Francisco Chronicle quoted a woman at the scene as saying she had been told that her husband of 12 years was among the dead.The woman, whom the paper did not name, said a stranger had answered her husband’s telephone when their daughter called, but that she had been unable to find out what had happened, despite being on police lines for several hours.“It sounds like a lot of innocent people lost their lives tonight,” the Chronicle quoted the woman saying. “We haven’t gotten an answer.”Family members waited outside the police lines seeking news about missing loved ones.Among them was Pamela Harris, who said her daughter had called her at 2.15am to say that her 38-year-old son, Sergio, had been shot and killed outside a nightclub.“She said he was dead. I just collapsed,” Harris said.She said that she was still waiting on official confirmation from police, adding: “I cannot leave here now until I know what’s going on. I’m not going anywhere. It seems like a dream.”Community activist Berry Accius said he had rushed to the scene shortly after the shooting.“It was just horrific,” he told local broadcaster KXTV. “Just as soon as I walked up you saw a chaotic scene, police all over the place, victims with blood all over their bodies, folks screaming, folks crying, people going, ‘Where is my brother?’ Mothers crying and trying to identify who their child was.”“The first thing I saw was a young lady draped in her blood and others’ blood. She was just on the phone saying ‘My sister is dead! My sister is dead!’” said Accius, whose Voice of the Youth leadership programme is focused on gun violence prevention.The violence occurred just blocks from the state capitol building in an area recently revitalised as an entertainment centre.It shattered the welcoming atmosphere as pandemic masks started coming off in the past week and bars and restaurants began filling with people long isolated by the coronavirus (Covid-19).Accius said that eyewitnesses had told him it appeared to erupt from nowhere.“All of a sudden folks were saying like there was issues happening on another side, folks were having an altercation and then there was gunshots and it wasn’t the normal pop-pop-pop...  it was some high powered artillery,” he told the Sacramento Bee.“The numbers of dead and wounded are difficult to comprehend. We await more information about exactly what transpired in this tragic incident,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said on Twitter. “Rising gun violence is the scourge of our city, state and nation, and I support all actions to reduce it.”The incident comes a little more than a month after a man shot and killed his three children and a fourth person before taking his own life in the same city.The mass casualty shooting is the latest in the United States, where firearms are involved in approximately 40,000 deaths a year, including suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive website.Lax gun laws and a constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms have repeatedly stymied attempts to clamp down on the number of weapons in circulation, despite greater controls being favoured by the majority of Americans.Three-quarters of all homicides in the US are committed with guns, and the number of pistols, revolvers and other firearms sold continues to rise.More than 23mn guns were sold in 2020 – a record – on top of 20mn in 2021, according to data compiled by website Small Arms Analytics.That number does not include “ghost” guns, which are sold disassembled, lack serial numbers, and are highly prized in criminal circles.In June 2021, 30% of American adults said they owned at least one gun, according to a Pew survey.