Two people were killed and five others were injured during a shooting at a high-school graduation ceremony in Richmond, Virginia, on Tuesday, according to police.
Eyewitness footage shared on Twitter shows the aftermath of the incident. One clip was filmed by an apparent passerby showing an emergency service worker taking care of a victim on the ground. In another part of the video, police cars are seen stopping the traffic from flowing towards the site of the shooting, near Richmond's Monroe Park.
Another clip shared by Reuters shows an aerial view of the site of the incident cordoned off by police. On the ground where the shooting happened, the camera reveals what seems to be blood splatters, next to a couple of first-aid kits.
The state of Virginia had 14.3 deaths per 100,000 total population in 2021 when it came to firearm mortality, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Protection. This put Virginia far behind the state of Mississippi, which had the most firearm deaths per 100,000 total population that year, at 33.9.
Police initially arrested two suspects over the incident, only to determine that one was not involved. The other, a 19-year-old man who was found in possession of several handguns, was kept in detention.
The suspect, according to police, knew one of the victims and shot at him amid the crowd of hundreds of people. They had just come out of the graduation event for Huguenot High School's students. It was held inside Altria Theater at the southwest corner of Monroe Park on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University.
The suspect, who has not yet been identified by police, was arrested after fleeing the scene on foot. He was found in possession of four handguns, three of which he might have fired, according to police, though it's not yet sure.
The suspect is likely to be charged with two counts of second-degree murder, as well as other offenses, interim Richmond Police Chief Rick Edwards told reporters at a press conference.
"When you have a crowd like this, innocent people are going to be caught up in the mayhem, and that's what happened today," Edwards said. "Obviously, this should have been a safe space... It's just incredibly tragic that someone decided to bring a gun to this incident and rain terror on our community."
The two victims have been identified by Edwards as a 36-year-old who was there for the graduation and an 18-year-old who had just graduated. Their names were not shared with the public. While local TV station WWBT reported that the two were father and son, Edwards has not confirmed this information.
Among the five wounded are a 31-year-old man who suffered life-threatening injuries, and four other men aged 14, 32, 55, and 58. A 9-year-old girl was struck by a car in the turmoil following the shooting. Several others were injured in falls or suffered from anxiety as they tried to flee the scene of the shooting and avoid gunfire, Edwards said.
"As they heard the gunfire, it was obviously chaos," Edwards said. "We had hundreds of people in Monroe Park, so people scattered. It was very chaotic at the scene."
Richmond public schools superintendent Jason Kamras said he was tired of seeing kids getting shot at schools in America. "I don't have any more words on this," he said, as quoted by U.K. newspaper The Guardian. "I'm just tired of seeing people get shot, our kids get shot. And I beg of the entire community to stop, to just stop."
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Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek Reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. and European politics, global affairs ... Read more
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