Four people, including a child, were killed in a shooting at an office building in Orange County, California, on Wednesday evening, officials said, marking a deadly end to a month consumed by a series of high-profile cases of gun violence in the United States.
The encounter happened at about 5.30pm in Orange, California, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, according to the police, who said that a suspect had been hospitalised and another person had been injured.
Additional details about the victims and the suspect were not immediately available from the authorities, as well as what prompted the shooting. Lieut Jennifer Amat, spokeswoman for the Orange Police Department, said at a news conference on Wednesday night that officers had responded to the area of 202 W Lincoln Avenue near Glassell Street after reports of shots fired.
When officers arrived, the shots were still being fired and the police found several victims, police said.
The owner of an auto repair shop next door, who asked not to be named, said he heard about four gunshots. A few minutes later, he said, the police surrounded the building. He heard at least 10 more gunshots after that, he said, although he still did not know exactly what had happened. “It was weird to have something like that happening next door,” he said. “We’d never heard anything like that before.”
The shooting took place less than six miles from Disneyland, which is in neighbouring Anaheim, California. The beige, low-rise building in Orange housed several businesses, including a property management company, an insurance agency and a consulting firm.
‘Heartbreaking’
“It’s just such a tragedy for the victims, their families, our community and our police department,” Ms Amat said. Governor of California Gavin Newsom said on Twitter that he was jolted by the shooting. “Horrifying and heartbreaking,” he said. “Our hearts are with the families impacted by this terrible tragedy tonight.”
Representative for California Katie Porter, a Democrat whose district includes part of Orange, expressed her sorrow on Twitter. “I’m deeply saddened by reports of a mass shooting in Orange County, and I’m continuing to keep victims and their loved ones in my thoughts as we continue to learn more,” she said. “My team and I will continue to monitor the situation closely.”
This past month, two mass shootings – one in Atlanta and the other in Boulder, Colorado – occurred within the span of one week. In Atlanta on March 16th, a gunman shot and killed eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, at three spas. On March 22nd, a man stormed a grocery store in Boulder and killed 10 people.
Until the shooting in Atlanta, it had been a year since there had been a large-scale shooting in a public place in the US, according to the Violence Project. – New York Times