Four people, including a child, were killed when a Suspect opened fire in an office building in southern California on Wednesday Evening, said the police.
The shooting took place in Orange, California, about 30 miles south of Los Angeles, around 5:30 p.m. local time, the Orange Police Department said.
The suspect and a woman were injured with gunshot wounds during the shooting, Lt. Jen Amat. Both were hospitalized and were in critical condition. It is unclear whether the suspect’s gunshot wounds were caused by himself or by the police, Amat said.
Details of what happened were rare early Thursday. The shooting comes just a week after a shooter walks in Boulder, Colorado killed 10 people in a supermarket. The week before there was a shooter in the Eight people were killed in the Atlanta area, most of them women of Asian originin three spas.
Here’s what we know:
What happened during the filming?
The Orange Police Department said in one Facebook post These officers responded to a call to fire that was fired around 5:30 p.m. “The officers arrived when shots were fired and located several victims, including fatalities, at the scene. There was an exchange of fire,” the post said.
Amat said the incident happened on the second floor of the building. She added that there was no ongoing threat to the public.
Cody Lev, who lives across from the office building, told the story the Orange County Register He heard three loud popping noises, then three more. There was silence, then he heard numerous shots, followed by sirens and more shots.
Uvaldo Madrigal told the story the Los Angeles Times He was next door at his dealership when the shooting started.
“They sounded very soft, so I didn’t think they were gunshots,” he told the newspaper.
He said he then heard about 10 gunshots and saw several police officers with guns drawn and police cars in the middle of the street. The police later asked him and his staff to leave the area. He saw two people being loaded into ambulances on stretchers. “I don’t know what condition they were in,” he told the Times. “Nothing like this has ever happened here before.”
Who are the victims?
Police did not identify the victims of the shooting, which included a child, until Thursday morning.
Photos appear to show that the building housed an insurance company, real estate company, and real estate management company, among others.
Paul Tovar said KTLA-TV that his brother owns a business there, Unified Homes, a mobile home broker. “He doesn’t answer the phone, and neither does my niece,” said Tovar. “I’m pretty scared and worried.”
Who is the suspect?
The police did not identify the suspect. Amat said a gun was recovered from the scene.
How did the officers react?
Katie Porter, MP, whose district is Orange, said she was “deeply saddened” by reports of the shooting.
“I continue to keep the victims and their families close as we study. My team and I will continue to monitor the situation closely,” she said tweeted.
Governor Gavin Newsom called the shooting “terrible and heartbreaking”. “Our hearts go out to the families who have been hit by this terrible tragedy tonight,” he said tweeted.
Is this the only mass shooting since Boulder?
According to the US, there were 14 mass shootings in the United States between the bouldering shoot and the shooting in Orange on Wednesday Gun violence archive.
The archives define mass shootings as four or more people who were shot or killed without the shooter. The archives do not rule out shootings based on the circumstances or the location in which they took place, not just in public places, for example.
Two people were killed and three injured in a shooting in Washington, DC on Wednesday The Washington Post The shooting reportedly stemmed from an argument between two groups and police were still looking for one or more suspects.
Amat said there had been no “such incident in the city of Orange” since 1997 when a gunman armed with an assault rifle attacked a California Department of Transportation maintenance yard. The suspect, a machine operator who was fired six weeks earlier, killed four people and wounded others, including a police officer, before the police killed him.
Contributor: The Associated Press
