Gun violence in Louisiana, 3 killed 7 injured at July 4th block party
Jul 5, 2023, 9:23 AM
Police officers on July 4 investigate the scene of Monday night's mass shooting in southwest Philadelphia. (Bastiaan Slabbers/Reuters via CNN)
(Bastiaan Slabbers/Reuters via CNN)
(CNN) — Three people are dead and at least seven others are injured after a shooting just before midnight Tuesday in Shreveport, Louisiana, a city council member told CNN.
Gunfire erupted at a Fourth of July block party – a “family and community event” that has taken place for more than a decade without any previous violence, Shreveport District A Councilwoman Tabatha Taylor said Wednesday.
It was difficult for first responders to get to the victims due to the amount of vehicles at the scene, police told CNN affiliate KSLA.
“Getting here and getting EMS here was a difficult thing. A lot of us had to park our cars and take off running because there were so many cars on the side of the street,” Shreveport police Lt. Van Wray told KSLA.
CNN has reached out to Shreveport police but have not received a response. Taylor, the council member, said no suspects have been arrested.
It was among a spate of shootings across the country over the Fourth of July weekend.
In Baltimore, at another block party on Sunday, two people were killed and another 28 were shot and injured – mostly teenagers. Investigators are searching for multiple assailants.
In Philadelphia, five people, including a 15-year-old boy, were killed Monday night. Authorities said the shooter appeared to fire randomly along several blocks of the city’s Kingsessing neighborhood before officers arrested the suspect, who was found with an AR-style rifle and a handgun.
In Texas, three people were killed and eight others were wounded in Fort Worth late Monday night – hours before the neighborhood’s Fourth of July parade took place on the same street.
And in Washington, DC, nine people were injured – including two minors – shortly before 1 a.m. Wednesday. Someone from a vehicle “fired shots in the direction of some of our residents that were outside just celebrating the Fourth of July,” Metropolitan Police Assistant Chief Leslie Parsons said.
Across the country, at least 412 people have been killed in mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Like CNN, the nonprofit defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people are shot – not including the perpetrators.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
