A late-night mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, on Saturday, Sept. 21 left four people dead and 17 wounded.
In a video released on Sunday morning, the Birmingham Police Department said that they were called to the popular Five Points area of the city around 11 p.m. on Saturday.
Videos by VICE
Once on the scene, officers discovered two adult males and one adult female lying unresponsive on a sidewalk. The victims, who were suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, were later pronounced dead by Birmingham Fire and Rescue.
Additionally, another adult man was taken to UAB Hospital and pronounced dead.
Seventeen other victims, with injuries ranging from non-life-threatening to life-threatening, were discovered in the area.
“We believe multiple suspects fired upon a large group of people who were outside a public area in the 2000 block of Magnolia Avenue South,” the BPD said in the video. “Detectives believe the shooting was not random and stemmed from an isolated incident where multiple victims were caught in the crossfire.”
Later, in a Sunday morning press conference, Chief Scott Thurman expanded on the situation. Thurman revealed that multiple shooters arrived at the scene in a vehicle, exited the vehicle to conduct the shooting, and then got back in their car and fled the scene.
Thurman added that one individual was targeted in the shooting. That target is one of the deceased victims, he said.
Over 100 shell casings were collected from the scene, Thurman said. He additionally revealed that a “fully automatic weapon” was used in the shooting.
Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin called the shooting “extremely unfortunate” and urged the public to help find “the shooters and get them off our streets.”
“This is a solvable problem… Gun violence is at an epidemic level, an epidemic crisis in our country. Unfortunately, the city of Birmingham finds itself, unfortunately, at the tip of that sphere,” he said.” Is it solvable? The answer is yes. Does it require everyone to come together? The answer’s also yes… Our desire, our priority, is to take killers and shooters off the streets.”
As of Sunday morning, no one is in custody. However, Thurman assured the public, “This is going to take some time for us, but we have the full support of our federal partners.”
