Lisa Lopez-Galvan was one of about two dozen people who were shot when gunfire erupted Feb. 14 outside the city’s Union Station. She was remembered during the 90-minute service as a loving wife and mother whose smile could light up a room and who saw each day as a chance for excitement and laughter.

With her casket near the front of the Redemptorist Catholic Church in Kansas City, Missouri. mourners — some wearing Chiefs jerseys — also heard a mariachi band play and sing.

Along with her husband and young adult son, the 43-year-old had joined an estimated crowd of 1 million people for the parade and rally. As the festivities ended, a dispute over what authorities described as the belief that people in one group were staring at people in another group led to gunfire.

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Lopez-Galvan, a music lover who played at weddings, quinceañeras and an American Legion bar and grill, was caught in the middle of it. Everyone else survived.

Two men are charged in her death, and two juveniles face gun charges. Her family responded to the charges this week with a statement expressing thanks to police and prosecutors.

“Though it does not bring back our beloved Lisa, it is comforting,” the statement began.

Players and celebrities alike have reached out to her family. Pop superstar Taylor Swift, who is frequently in the stands during Chiefs games because she is dating tight end Travis Kelce, donated $100,000 to Lopez-Galvan’s family.

And because she was wearing a Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker jersey at the celebration, he responded to requests on social media seeking help in obtaining a similar jersey — possibly so the mother of two could be laid to rest in it.

“While the family is mourning their loss and grappling with their numerous injuries, I will continue to pray for their healing and the repose of Lisa’s soul,” Butker said in a statement.

Rosa Izurieta and Martha Ramirez worked with Lopez-Galvan for about a year at a local staffing firm but had known her since childhood. They remembered her as an extrovert and a staunch Catholic who was devoted to her family, passionate about connecting job seekers with employment and ready to help anyone.

And, they said, working part time playing music allowed her to share her passion as one of the area’s few Latina DJs.

“This senseless act has taken a beautiful person from her family and this KC Community,” the radio station KKFI-FM, where she was the co-host of a program called “Taste of Tejano,” said in a statement.

Izurieta and Ramirez said Lopez-Galvan’s Kansas City roots run deep. Her father founded the city’s first mariachi group, Mariachi Mexico, in the 1980s, they said, and the family is well known and active in the Latino community. Her brother, Beto Lopez, is CEO of the Guadalupe Centers, which provides community services and runs charter schools for the Latino community.

Lopez-Galvan and her two children went to Bishop Miege, a Catholic high school in a suburb on the Kansas side, and she worked for years as a clerk in a police department there.

“This is another example of a real loving, real human whose life was taken tragically with a senseless act,” Beto Lopez said in an interview last week on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

According to Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves, a total of 23 people were shot during the incident, which occurred near Union Station just after the conclusion of the Chiefs’ championship rally.

One of those victims died from her injuries, according to police. Of the 22 other victims, who ranged in age from 8 to 47, at least half were under the age of 16, Graves told police.

Authorities also revealed what they believe to be the preliminary motive in the case, saying that a dispute between several individuals ended in an exchange of gunfire.

Of the three suspects in custody, two are under the age of 18, according to police. Authorities are continuing to evaluate whether there are other suspects involved in the case.

Police do not believe that is a link to terrorist groups or homegrown violent extremists, and several firearms were recovered at the scene, according to the official update Thursday morning.

The victim in the case was identified Wednesday as Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a DJ at Kansas City radio station KKFI. Her sister Carmen Lopez Murguia also confirmed her death to NBC News.

The shooting occurred near a parking garage west of Kansas City’s Union Station, which is where the Chiefs’ victory parade ended and their Wednesday rally took place.

Thousands of fans were gathered in the area at the time of the shooting, fleeing the scene when the gunfire erupted.

In all, 22 fans were injured by gunfire and were transported to area hospitals, according to police. Three suspects were taken into custody at the scene, including one suspect that was tackled by bystanders and held until police arrived on scene.

An investigation into the shooting remains ongoing at this time, and further information is expected in coming days.

Each of the parades held in honor of the most recent champions of the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and National Hockey League have been marred in some form by gunfire in the area or the threat of mass violence.   

That alarming trend continued Wednesday when a shooting after the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade left one person dead and at least 20 injured. Two armed suspects were taken into custody, according to Kansas City police.

“I’m angry at what happened today,” Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves said. “The people who came to this celebration should expect a safe environment. We had over 800 law enforcement officers, Kansas City and other agencies, at the location to keep everyone safe. Because of bad actors, which were very few, this tragedy occurred, even in the presence of uniformed law enforcement officers.”

The shooting in Kansas City appears, but it not yet confirmed, to be the first that randomly targeted parade attendees since 2019 when four were shot and wounded during the Toronto Raptors’ NBA championship parade. 

NBC News reported at the time that the Toronto shooting occurred in the City Hall Square just after the team arrived for the parade. Three people were taken into custody, and police said the victims did not suffer life-threatening injuries.

The ceremony was briefly interrupted as the crowd was alerted of the emergency and asked to remain calm.

“I hope all those injured in today’s shooting have a speedy recovery, and I’d like to thank the Toronto police for acting so quickly,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted at the time. “We won’t let this act of violence take away from the spirit of today’s parade.”

Other acts of violence occurred in the vicinity of NBA parades in the years prior to the Toronto shooting.

In 2015, three people were shot a half mile from the Golden State Warriors’ championship rally main stage. Police did not say at the time whether the shooting was connected in any way to the parade.

After the Cleveland Cavaliers’ championship parade in 2016, a 15-year-old boy was arrested for firing shots in a crowd after officers broke up a fight outside Tower City, according to Cleveland.com. The gunfire reportedly struck a 13-year-old girl twice in the knees. 

The more recent incidents that occurred during championship celebrations did not appear to be directly linked to the parade itself but caused panic in the area. 

Following a parade for the NBA champion Denver Nuggets in June, two people were shot along the route in what police said was a targeted incident. Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas told reporters the shooting was “completely unassociated to the parade and subsequent events.”

The incident occurred just days after 10 were injured during a shooting in the area on the night the Nuggets won the championship. That incident, according to the Denver Post, was connected to a drug deal, leaving multiple innocent bystanders wounded and causing the remaining crowd in the area to scatter.

Days later, a Las Vegas man was jailed after being accused of threatening mass violence at the victory parade for the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights. The suspect, according to the Associated Press, threatened to either drive a truck into throngs of hockey fans or use gasoline bombs to injure police and revelers on the Las Vegas Strip.

In November, two arrests were made during the Texas Rangers’ championship parade after shots were fired in the area following an argument and altercation between the occupants of two different vehicles in a parking lot.

Each incident tainted what was intended to be a joyous occasion, but none to the extent of the shooting in Kansas City, which left one person dead and three in critical condition. 

“This is absolutely a tragedy,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said, “the likes of which we never would have expected in Kansas City, the likes of which we’ll remember for some time.”

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With their weapons drawn, the two Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers climbed stairs to a second-floor walkway overlooking the ground floor of the business school during the Dec. 6 shooting that left three professors dead and one wounded on the 30,000-student campus.

The shooter, later identified as 67-year-old Anthony Polito, appears for only a few moments in more than five hours of footage made public Wednesday, but the video provides the first look at the suspect in the building after opening fire on the top floors of the five-story business school.

When the rampage began, students and staff had been eating lunch and playing games in a large courtyard just outside the business school, which sits across from the university’s student union.

The video shows Polito wearing a long black trench coat over a white shirt and moving calmly through the first floor of the business school as officers swarmed the building. One of his hands was visible at his side, and there was no indication he had a gun.

“Get out! Get out!” the officers shouted at Polito while pointing to an exit and continuing along the walkway.

Clark County Undersheriff Andrew Walsh told The Associated Press on Thursday that it is apparent the two officers did not know they encountered the gunman inside the building.

“They don’t have a description of the shooter at the time, and they know there are other police resources on the first floor,” he said.

About a minute later, Polito exited the building, pulled his weapon and was killed in a shootout with university police officers, according to authorities. No one outside was harmed.

The body camera footage released Wednesday did not include the shootout. But a short video that Sheriff Kevin McMahill released earlier this month showed Polito descending a set of stairs outside the business school, his long black coat swaying.

In that video, one of the university police officers approached Polito from behind, but when the shooter turned around, weapon in hand, the officer dove for cover behind a patrol car. McMahill said when he released the video that the university officers also did not initially know they had encountered the gunman.

Police have not specified a motive for the shooting but said Polito was in financial trouble and had been turned down for a teaching job at UNLV and other Nevada schools. He left a tenured post in 2017 at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, after teaching business there for more than 15 years.

The three professors killed at UNLV were Naoko Takemaru, 69, an author and associate professor of Japanese studies; Cha Jan “Jerry” Chang, 64, an associate professor in the business school’s Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology department; and Patricia Navarro Velez, 39, an accounting professor focusing on research in cybersecurity disclosures and data analytics.

The wounded victim, a 38-year-old visiting professor, has not been identified.

Police said more body camera footage will be released in coming weeks.

Anthony Polito, 67, fatally shot three people and wounded a fourth Wednesday at UNLV, where he had applied for a teaching job in 2020 but was not hired, two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the case told NBC News. 

He mailed letters to nearly two dozen various university personnel throughout the country before the attack, Las Vegas police said Thursday. The letters were sent without a return address, and a white powder substance — later said to be harmless — was found in a screening of one of the envelopes. The letter’s contents, police said, were unclear. 

A specific motive for the shooting is also unclear, as are details about the shooter’s life leading up to the deadly shooting. 

But during his time at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, where he taught for over a decade, he was known as a popular — if eccentric — professor. A former student recalled that he pursued her in a way that made her uncomfortable, contacting her daily and buying her gifts, while another noted his fixation on student feedback. And Polito’s obsession with Las Vegas was something multiple people who knew him during that time recalled.

Read the full story at NBCNews.com here.

At least two shooters opened fire just before 3 a.m. in the Ybor City area, Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw said during a news conference at the scene. Later Sunday he said detectives arrested Tyrell Stephen Phillips, 22, in connection with the shooting. He was charged with second-degree murder with a firearm.

“My heart goes out to the families,” Bercaw said in a news briefing posted online. He called the gun violence “extremely tragic” and said police would not tolerate it.

Earlier, authorities said one suspect was in custody and at least one other was being sought, but Bercaw did not immediately say Sunday afternoon whether police were seeking anyone else after Phillips’ arrest.

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“We make arrests quickly,” Bercaw said in the briefing. “We have a sense of urgency and if you are going to be out there with a gun, you are going to pay for it.”

It was not immediately known if Phillips had an attorney, and he remained jailed pending an initial court appearance Monday, according to officials and local reports.

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor, a former city police chief, lamented that Tampa was the focus of national attention for “yet another shooting in our country.”

“We’ve got to say, as a country, that enough is enough,” she said.

The early morning fight occurred in an area with several bars and clubs that was once the center of Tampa’s cigar industry. In more recent years, the area has been known for its lively nightlife, and Tampa police spokeswoman Jonee Lewis said “hundreds” of people were on the streets at the time of Sunday’s shootings because numerous nightspots had just closed.

Police had not released the names of those killed, but Emmitt Wilson said his 14-year-old son, Elijah, was one of the fatalities. Wilson came to the scene Sunday after getting a call that his son was a victim.

“It’s madness to me. I don’t even feel like I’m here right now,” Wilson said. “I hope the investigators do their job.”

Video posted online shows people, many in Halloween costumes, drinking and talking on the street when about a dozen shots ring out followed seconds later by about eight more. A stampede ensued, with some people toppling over metal tables and taking cover behind them. Video from the aftermath shows police officers treating several people lying wounded on the ground.

“It was a disturbance or a fight between two groups. And in this fight between two groups we had hundreds of innocent people involved that were in the way,” Bercaw said.

He did not provide details of the injuries suffered by the victims taken to area hospitals. Authorities later said most of those hurt were treated and released.

Police are still investigating the reason for the fight between the two groups, he said.

Castor blamed Sunday’s shootings on easy access to guns.

“Yet again, a senseless loss of life by those choosing to settle a dispute with firearms. Lives lost and others forever changed. To what end?” Castor asked. “The Tampa Police Department had 50 officers deployed in the area at the time, so this is not a law enforcement issue.

The scene of the shooting was quiet Sunday morning as officers had the area blocked off. Roosters that roam the historic Ybor City streets wandered among empty cups, beer bottles and shoes left behind.

Two young women who came to the scene Sunday morning said they decided not to go to Ybor City the night before because of the crowds.

“We know how Ybor gets,” said Minna Cohen, a 23-year-old recent University of Tampa graduate. “A lot of crime happens here often. You sometimes know not to go to certain places.”

Her friend, 21-year-old Carolina Londoner, said when the bars all close in the early morning hours the streets are packed and unruly.

“When everyone comes together it gets messy, and it’s that way all night,” she said.

___

AP writer Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contributed to this report.

Sources first told the NBC10 Boston Investigators that Robert Card — the subject of a dayslong manhunt that followed mass shootings at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley and Schemengees Bar and Grille — had been found deceased, and that there was no longer a threat. The Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office later said in a Facebook post that the suspect was dead.

“Maine State Police have located the body of Robert Card in Lisbon. He is dead,” Gov. Janet Mills said at a press conference. “I’ve called President Biden to inform him about his news.”

Commissioner Michael Sauschuck of Maine Department of Public Safety said the gunman’s body was found at 7:45 p.m. It’s unclear when he died, but Sauschuck said he had a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Hours later, police officers with long guns continued to block off all entrances to Maine Recycling, a recycling plant in Lisbon where the shooter had recently worked. The suspect’s vehicle was found Wednesday night near a river a short distance from that location.

Mills expressed “profound gratitude” for all of the law enforcement agencies who took part in the manhunt.

“Like many people, I’m breathing a sigh of relief tonight knowing that Robert Card is no longer a threat to anyone,” Mills said. “I know there are some people — many people — who share that sentiment, but I also know that his death may not bring solace to many. Now is a time to heal.”

Lewiston Police Chief David St. Pierre said he was “elated” to learn that the killer was “no longer a threat to our community or any other community,” but pointed out that the focus should remain on the victims.

“I just don’t want to forget the families that are grieving and will continue to grieve, I don’t want to forget the law enforcement officials that have worked tirelessly throughout this whole event,” St. Pierre said. “We’re going to grieve for the families that have lost loved ones here. We’re going to continue to work, we’re going to persevere, and we’ll become better people for it.”

President Joe Biden issued a statement on the “tragic two days” for Maine and the nation, crediting the hard-working law enforcement officers for their work, thanking Mills for her leadership and remembering the “at least eighteen souls brutally slain.”

“Tonight we’re grateful that Lewiston and surrounding communities are safe after spending excruciating days hiding in their homes,” Biden said in a statement.

He also called on congressional Republicans to take action — most Democrats support adding some restrictions on guns, such as the assault-style rifle used in the Lewiston shooting — saying people in Lewiston deserve an end to gun violence.

“Americans should not have to live like this. I once again call on Republicans in Congress to fulfill their obligation to keep the American people safe. Until that day comes, I will continue to do everything in my power to end this gun violence epidemic. The Lewiston community – and all Americans – deserve nothing less,” Biden said.

The update that the gunman was killed came after days of angst as an armed and dangerous man was unaccounted for after 18 people were killed and 13 injured.

Members of the state’s congressional delegation said they were grateful that the manhunt had come to an end.

“Mainers can breathe a collective sigh of relief thanks to the brave first responders who worked night and day to find this killer,” Republican Sen. Susan Collins said in a statement Friday night. “When President Biden called me this evening to tell me the perpetrator of the heinous attacks in Lewiston had been found, we both expressed our profound appreciation for the courage and determination of these brave men and women.”

Collins also thanked Mills, health care workers and city officials.

“To the families who lost loved ones and to those injured by this attack, I know that no words can diminish the shock, pain, and justifiable anger you feel,” she said. “It is my hope that you will find solace and strength in knowing that you are in the hearts of people throughout Maine and across the nation.”

“Tonight, I join my neighbors and friends in a communal sense of relief,” said independent Sen. Angus King. “We are grateful to law enforcement and first responders, for fifty hours of nonstop dedication and determination that brought us this relief. It will take a long, long time to process this pain, but Maine people have grit, resolve and heart and we will come together through this difficult grieving period and hope for brighter, calmer days.”

Shelter-in-place orders were in place in Androscoggin County and parts of neighboring Sagadahoc County. Those orders were lifted earlier Friday.

Investigators have received more than 530 tips and leads since the killings.

At a press conference Friday, Maine authorities announced the names of all 18 victims who were killed in the tragedy.

“The victims of this tragedy are our family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors,” Gov. Janet Mills said in a statement. “It is often said that our state is ‘one big, small town’ because Maine is such a closeknit community.”

Mills noted one of the victims, Josh Seal, was a personal friend. An ASL interpreter during the state’s COVID-19 briefings, he was one of four members of a deaf cornhole league killed at Schemengees.

The shootings sparked an outcry of support in Maine, throughout New England, and across the country.

Maine lawmakers were quick to express their horror. Moderate Democratic Rep. Jared Golden reversed course on his previous objection to a ban of assault weapons like the one used in the attack, calling it a mistake and committing to push for one.

“The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown of Lewiston, Maine,” Golden said. “For the good of my community, I will work with any colleague to get this done in the time that I have left in Congress.”

Biden previously shared his dismay that “Once again, our nation is in mourning after yet another senseless and tragic mass shooting.”

“Today, Jill and I are praying for the Americans who’ve lost their lives, for those still in critical care, and for the families, survivors, and community members enduring shock and grief,” the president said in a statement after the shooting.

The Boston Bruins and Boston Celtics honored the victims at their respective games on Thursday and Friday.

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If you or someone you know needs help, please contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling 988, call the National Suicide Prevention hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting ‘Home’ to 741741 anytime.

Much of Thursday’s search focused on a property belonging to one of Card’s relatives in rural Bowdoin, where trucks and vans full of armed agents from the FBI and other agencies eventually surrounded a home. Card and anyone else inside were repeatedly ordered to surrender.

“You need to come outside now with nothing in your hands. Your hands in the air,” police said through a loudspeaker. In most instances when police execute warrants — even for suspects wanted for violent crimes — they move quickly to enter the home.

But hours later, after repeated announcements and a search, authorities moved off — and it was still unclear whether Card had ever been at the location, state police said.

As the manhunt continues, here’s what we know about the suspected gunman, how the shooting unfolded and what’s next.

Who is Robert Card?

The suspected gunman in a mass shooting in Maine that claimed at least 18 lives and injured 13 others is a U.S. Army Reserve veteran who sought mental health treatment over the summer, according to a law enforcement bulletin reviewed by NBC 5 Investigates and information law enforcement officials.

NBC 5 Investigates has confirmed with U.S. Army Reserves that Robert Card is assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 304th Infantry Regiment in Saco, Maine.

As of Friday morning, Card’s whereabouts remain unknown.

Court records reviewed by NBC 5 Investigates show that a judge granted a prosecutor’s request Thursday to withhold from public view certain information contained in Card’s arrest warrant.

The assistant attorney general wrote that “an arrest has not yet been made and disclosure of information in the affidavit may impede on the law enforcement’s ability to conduct their investigation. A number of witnesses still need to be interviewed.”

Law enforcement sources told NBC News that over the summer his commanders sent him for psychiatric treatment after he reported hearing voices and made threats to shoot up a National Guard base. A law enforcement bulletin stated Card was committed to a mental health facility for two weeks before being released.

Card, still at large, was considered armed and dangerous, police said. A telephone number listed for Card in public records was not in service.

Maine State Police say Card is wanted on eight counts of murder. Ten victims remain unidentified. As more victims are identified, the counts against Card is expected to grow, Maine State Police Col. William Ross said.

What do Maine gun laws say?

Maine laws allow for gun ownership without a permit, and two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News that the suspect legally purchased the weapon used during Wednesday night’s shootings.

Maine also has a “yellow flag” law that allows law enforcement to take away an individual’s firearms, but only after they’ve been taken into protective custody and if a medical professional finds a “likelihood of foreseeable harm.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what specific action was taken after the suspect’s mental health treatment.

An emailed statement to NBC Boston from a court spokesperson said mental health cases and weapons restriction cases are confidential.

The family of the suspected gunman told NBC News that he had been experiencing an “acute” mental health episode for months and had a “manic belief” that people were saying negative things about him before Wednesday’s massacre.

What do Illinois ‘red flag’ laws say?

On Thursday, NBC 5 Investigates spoke to Former State Rep. Kathleen Willis, who was the chief sponsor of Illinois’ red flag law in 2018.

“In the state of Illinois, if you are put into a mental health facility, that automatically revokes your FOID card for a certain period of time, and I guess we need to recognize why was that not done in Maine or was this in the pipeline to be done and hadn’t followed through?” she said.

Illinois’ law allows individuals to petition the court directly to remove firearms from their loved ones if they pose a risk of danger to themselves or others.

“And it’s not a permanent taking away of their guns,” Willis said. “It’s a temporary taking away of guns until they get their life back in order.”

Another major difference between the gun laws in Illinois and Maine: In wake of the Highland Park massacre last summer, Illinois passed an assault weapons ban.  

How the shooting unfolded

Lewiston Police said the shooting took place on Wednesday evening at Schemengees Bar and Grille and at Just-In-Time Recreation, a bowling alley about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) away. A number of parents and children were at Just-In-Time as part of a children’s bowling league.

The bowling alley is about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) north of the Bates College campus, on the outskirts of downtown, and offers traditional tenpin bowling and candlepin, a variant found in New England.

Seven people were shot and killed at Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, including one female and six males, and eight people were shot and killed at Schemengees Bar and Grille, including seven males inside and one male outside. Multiple other people were transferred to various hospitals, three of whom have died. Eight of the dead have been identified and family notified, while authorities are still working to identify the other 10.

The father of a manager killed at Schemengees told NBC News’ Lester Holt that Card had been to the bar before.

“All of the people over there know him,” said Leroy Walker. “He would actually come to Schemengees; he’d been there off and on.”

Patrick Poulin was supposed to be at the Just-In-Time bowling center with his 15-year-old son, who is in a league that was practicing Wednesday. They stayed home, but he estimates there were probably several dozen young bowlers, ages 4 to 18, along with their parents, in the facility. Poulin’s brother was there, he said, and shepherded some of the children outside when the shooting began.

“He’s pretty shook up,” Poulin said Thursday. “And it’s just sinking in today, like, wow, I was very close to being there. And a lot of the people that got hurt, I know.”

Less than 15 minutes later, numerous 911 calls started coming in from Schemengees Bar and Grille a few miles away.

Schools, businesses remain on lockdown

Schools, doctor’s offices and grocery stores closed and people stayed behind locked doors in cities as far as 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the scenes of the shootings. Maine’s largest city, Portland, closed its public buildings, while Canada Border Services Agency issued an “armed and dangerous” alert to its officers stationed along the U.S. border.

Streets in Lewiston and surrounding communities were virtually deserted late Thursday night. 

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Schools in Lewiston were to remain closed Friday, while those in Portland would decide in the morning whether to open. Bates College in Lewiston also cancelled classes Friday and postponed the inauguration of the school’s first Black president.

April Stevens lives in the same neighborhood where one of the shootings took place. She turned on all her lights overnight and locked her doors. She knew someone killed at the bar and another person injured who needed surgery.

“We’re praying for everyone,” Stevens said through tears.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Card, 40, is suspected of gunning down at least 18 people at a bowling alley and bar in Lewiston on Wednesday. Lockdowns for the local county, Androscoggin, and part of neighboring Sagadahoc County, were lifted as of Friday afternoon, though a ban on hunting remained in place for Lewiston, Lisbon, Bowdoin and Monmouth.

“There are going to be communities that hear gunshots from time to time because there’s going to be hunting,” Maine Department of Public Safety Commissioner Michael Sauschuck said at a news conference Friday evening.

The massive dragnet for Card involved two sets of teams: investigators, who were both combing for evidence at the crime scenes and the boat launch in Lisbon, Maine, where Card’s vehicle was found, as well as an apprehension team looking to try and catch him alive.

One of the possibilities investigators are considering is whether Card’s body is in the Androscoggin River, Sauschuck said at an earlier news conference. Divers, aircraft and officers on foot would be scouring the river Friday.

“We have a lot of irons in the fire,” Sauschuck said, adding, “I’m not saying we know that the suspect is in the water.”

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Investigators have received more than 530 tips and leads, and they’ve set up an FBI tip line for more: fbi.gov/lewistontips. Sauschuck also confirmed that a note was found at Card’s home in Bowdoin, as NBC New York reported Thursday, but didn’t share information about what was in the note, citing the ongoing investigation.

Avoiding questions on whether there were warnings that should have triggered Maine’s “yellow flag” law — Sauschuck said there would be time to engage in that issue — he shared confidence that Card would eventually be caught.

“There is no question in my mind that we’re going to bring this individual into custody one way or the other,” he said.

President Joe Biden received a briefing on the shooting Friday from FBI Director Christopher Wray and other top staff, according to the White House.

Part of the manhunt was on full display Thursday night, when police surrounded Card’s home in Bowdoin. They issued commands over the loud speaker — but officials later clarified that they were standard announcements in a large-scale search.

Police said it was unknown whether Card, who’s an Army reservist and firearms instructor, was even at that location or if they were simply just doing their due diligence to find him. Sauschuck said Friday to expect more such announcements until Card is found.

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The search started about 7 p.m. Wednesday, when the Auburn Communication Center was notified that there was a man walking into Just-In-Time Recreation — a bowling alley on Mollison Street — and began shooting. Seven people were shot, including one female and six males.

Shortly after, at about 7:08 p.m., police said a man came into Schemengees Bar and Grille restaurant on Lincoln Street and began shooting. Eight people were shot — seven males inside and one outside.

An hour later, law enforcement released a picture of the shooter and later identified the suspect as 40-year-old Card from Bowdoin. There is currently an arrest warrant issued for him with eight counts of murder.

The vehicle of interest was found at about 11:30 p.m., roughly eight miles from Lewiston in Lisbon. Police described the car as a small white SUV with a front bumper that was painted black.

Altogether, 18 were killed and another 13 were injured.

NBC10 Boston spoke with a woman, who was a longtime Auburn, Me., resident but moved to Florida when her children grew up. She said she was at home watching television when her show was interrupted by the horrific news.

It turned out, her two daughters were in the bowling alley when the gunman unleashed a barrage of bullets, killing seven people. One of her daughters made it out alive — but the other, Tricia Asselin, did not.

People in Bowdoin, Lisbon and Lewiston had been asked to shelter in place. That order was lifted Friday evening.

There are more than 350 police officers searching for Card.

In Massachusetts, the Boston Bruins paid tribute to the victims of the mass shootings during their game against the Anaheim Ducks at TD Garden Thursday night.

Head coach Jim Montgomery and goalie Jeremy Swayman played for the University of Maine.

Swayman hung a commemorative jersey behind Boston’s bench. It reads, “Lewiston Strong” across the back, along with the number 207, representing Maine’s area code. 

Players for both the Bruins and the Ducks taped their sticks blue and signed them. Those are being auctioned off to support the victims families. The Boston Bruins Foundation announced it will pledge a minimum of $100,000 to the cause.

Meanwhile, the Celtics posted a statement on social media, saying, “Our hearts ache as we reckon with the devastating shootings in Lewiston. We mourn with everyone in our Maine family experiencing the agonizing loss of this tragedy.”

“I personally spent four wonderful years at the University of Maine and I know how great the culture is in that state and I know how great the people are. My heart-felt sympathies to everybody that’s impacted,” said Montgomery.

“I spent time in Portland, Maine, some 37-miles from where it’s at and when you see people go through difficult situations that they didn’t ask for, it’s really painful,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said Thursday.

Robert Card manhunt latest

Mass Shooting Oct 26, 2023

Note found at home of alleged gunman in Maine mass shooting: Law enforcement officials

Lewiston, Maine mass shooting Oct 26, 2023

Family of Maine shooting suspect says his mental health had deteriorated rapidly

On the evening of Oct. 25, a gunman went on a shooting spree at various locations in the town, including a bowling alley. The shootings killed at least 18 people and left 13 others injured. The search for the person of interest continues.

“I am shocked, and deeply saddened by last night’s tragedy in my hometown, Lewiston, Maine,” Dempsey wrote on his Instagram on Oct. 26. “Maine’s great strength is its sense of community, and now we are being asked to come together to support everyone that has been devastated by this senseless act.”

The actor continued by writing that he and his family “are heartbroken for the victims, their families, and the community.”

Dempsey was born in Lewiston and raised in the nearby towns of Turner and Buckfield. Lewiston is also the location of the former “Grey’s Anatomy” star’s Dempsey Center.

Mass Shooting Oct 26, 2023

Note found at home of alleged gunman in Maine mass shooting: Law enforcement officials

He founded the center in 2008 after his late mother’s battle with ovarian cancer. The Dempsey Center provides personalized and comprehensive cancer care at no cost. There is also a second location in South Portland, Maine.

Following the news of the fatal shootings, the Dempsey Center noted on their Instagram, “Out of an abundance of caution after recent events in our community, the Dempsey Centers in both Lewiston and South Portland will be closed today, October 26th.

“Our hearts are with the victims, their families, first responders, medical personnel, and the entire Lewiston/Auburn community,” the message concluded.

The gunman began a shooting spree on Wednesday evening at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, where seven died, and restaurant Schemengees Bar and Grille, where eight died, officials said at a press briefing, according to NBC News. Three more later died at area hospitals.

A shelter in place order remained for the city, as well as surrounding communities of Lisbon and Bowdoin, as the hunt for the person of interest, identified as Robert Card, 40, continues. 

Lewiston is the 565th mass shooting of the year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as at least four victims shot and killed excluding the shooter.

Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies are all involved in the manhunt. 

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A Pennsylvania woman says two of her relatives were among the 18 people killed in two mass shootings in Maine. 

The shootings occurred Wednesday night at two businesses in Lewiston.

Seven people were shot and killed at Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley while eight people were shot and killed at Schemengees Bar and Grille. Other victims were transferred to various hospitals, three of whom have died. Eight of the dead have been identified and their family notified, while authorities are still working to identify the other 10.

Police identified 40-year-old Robert Card of Bowdoin, Maine, as a suspect in the shootings and they continue to search for him. 

Kim McConville of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, told NBC News her family learned Thursday afternoon that her cousin Bill Young and his 14-year-old son Aaron were among the victims killed in one of the shootings.

Prior to learning that Young and his son had died, McConville said family members had pinged his cell phone to the bowling alley where one of the shootings took place. She described the panic her family felt while trying to reach out to Young.

“It’s total chaos,” she said during an interview with NBC News before she found out her loved ones had died. “People aren’t getting any of the information they need. You know, it’s there. They’re not getting anything new. They’re not telling them any more than we’re getting off a news conference.” 

McConville described Young and his son as “innocent people.” 

“Just innocent people out for a night of bowling,” she said. “This was a children’s event. You know, who expects a shooter to go into a children’s event? But you know, this is a crazy world that we live in today.”

A note was found in the home of the alleged Maine mass shooter, according to multiple law enforcement officials, as a manhunt was underway to find the man who allegedly killed 18 people and critically injured more than a dozen others after opening fire at multiple locations.

Four senior law enforcement officials told NBC New York that investigators are looking to ascertain the meaning of the note discovered in the home of Robert Card during the course of a search warrant executed at the house. Law enforcement is trying to determine how the note could potentially guide their investigation, the officials said.

Multiple law enforcement bodies were still searching for Card late Thursday afternoon, with the town of Lewiston and several other areas of the state still under lockdown.

An arrest warrant was issued for Card, a 40-year-old from the town of Bowdoin with a military background, who was initially only being sought for questioning in the case, part of a massive investigation set up by local, state and federal law enforcement responding to one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. He is facing eight counts of murder only because the other 10 victims have not yet been identified.

Mass Shooting Oct 25, 2023

Who is the Lewiston, Maine, active shooter? Latest details on manhunt for Robert Card

“He should be considered armed and dangerous based on our investigation,” Col. William Ross from the Maine State Police said.

Two sources familiar with the matter said a gun was discovered in a white Subaru that was found at a boat launch in the neighboring town of Lisbon Wednesday night. Investigators are looking into whether it is the same weapon used in the mass shooting.

Anyone with information on Card’s whereabouts is asked to call 911 or the state police tip lines at 207-213-9526 or 207-509-9002.

The details surrounding the deadly shooting remained murky for much of Thursday as the search for Card continued. Seven people were shot and killed at Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley Wednesday night, including one female and six males, and eight people were shot and killed at Schemengees Bar and Grille, including seven males inside and one male outside.

Multiple other people were transferred to various hospitals, three of whom later died. Eight of the dead had been identified and family notified, while authorities are still working to identify the other 10. Law enforcement sources previously told NBC News that at least 60 people were hurt, some of them while fleeing the scene and not during the actual shooting.

“This is a dark day for Maine,” Gov. Janet Mills said at the Wednesday morning press conference. “I know it’s hard for us to think about healing when our hearts are broken, but I want every person in Maine to know that we will heal together. We are strong, we are resilient, we are a very caring people, and in the days and weeks ahead, we will need to lean on those qualities more than ever before.”

Lewiston Police Chief David St. Pierre added that “this is truly a tragedy that goes beyond comprehension,” calling the search for Card an “all-hands-on-deck” operation.

“Our reality for today is this suspect is still at large,” Commissioner Mike Sauschuck of the Maine Department of Public Safety said. “But we also have an incredibly strong, laser-like focus on bringing this suspect into custody and ultimately to justice.”

“We’re actively searching for him,” he added. “We don’t know his location and I’ll leave it at that.” 

Residents of Lisbon were told to continue sheltering in place, with many businesses in that area remaining closed as well. The Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office had yet to retract its advice that all businesses in the area lock down or close. Several roads are also closed in the area as the manhunt continues.

Maine State Police announced shortly after 6 a.m. Thursday that the shelter in place and school closings had been expanded to the town of Bowdoin, where Card is from. People are being told to stay inside their homes while investigators continue their search.

Around 2 p.m., a public safety alert was issued extending the shelter in place order for Androscoggin County and northern Sagadahoc County. "Please make sure your homes and vehicles are secured," the alert read.

Public schools in the area were closed Thursday. Bates College, which is located in Lewiston, remains on lockdown. The school said Thursday morning that one of its employees was present at one of the shooting locations and was injured, but is expected to make a full recovery. Two students were also near one of the crime scenes but were unharmed.

Emergency officials in neighboring New Hampshire said they are also monitoring the shootings and sharing information with local, state and federal partners. Officials in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Vermont have said they are also on alert and keeping tabs on the manhunt.

After the shooting, police, many armed with rifles, took up positions while the city descended into eerie quiet — punctuated by occasional sirens — as people hunkered down at home.

President Joe Biden spoke by phone to Mills and the state's Senate and House members, offering “full federal support in the wake of this horrific attack,” a White House statement said. He issued a statement on Thursday condemning the shootings and calling for greater gun safety measures.

"Today, in the wake of yet another tragedy, I urge Republican lawmakers in Congress to fulfill their duty to protect the American people. Work with us to pass a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to enact universal background checks, to require safe storage of guns, and end immunity from liability for gun manufacturers," he said. "This is the very least we owe every American who will now bear the scars — physical and mental — of this latest attack."

Who is Robert Card?

Experts told NBC10 Boston that the person shown on the surveillance footage was evidently prepared to kill people.

Card, the suspect being sought by police, is a firearms instructor trained by the military who was recently committed to a mental health facility, according to a state police bulletin that was circulated to law enforcement officials on Wednesday night.

He is a longtime member of the Army Reserve with no combat deployments, the Army confirmed to NBC News. He reached the rank of Sergeant 1st Class, according to Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee, who said Card is a petroleum supply specialist. Card enlisted in December 2002, with awards including the Army Achievement Medal, Army Reserve Component Achievement Medal x2, Humanitarian Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal and Army Service Ribbon.

A bulletin put out by the Maine Information and Analysis Center, a database for law enforcement officials, said Card “recently reported mental health issues to include hearing voices and threats to shoot up the National Guard Base in Saco, ME."

The assault rifle-style weapon used by Card was purchased legally this year, according to two senior law enforcement officials who spoke to NBC News.

In a news conference on Wednesday night, Sauschuck said hundreds of officers are involved in the search. Officials said on Thursday that over 350 law enforcement personnel are now involved in the search.

He said a "reunification center" was set up at nearby Auburn Middle School for anyone looking to reunite with family members who are unaccounted for. Hospitals in the area, which is north of Portland and southwest of Augusta, had activated critical care procedures to deal with the influx of casualties.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More on the Lewiston, Maine, mass shooting

Lewiston, Maine mass shootings Oct 25, 2023

Lewiston, Maine, mass shooting leaves 15+ dead, dozens hurt

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As many as 18 people are dead, four are critically injured and dozens more are injured after a gunman opened fire at a restaurant and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday and then fled into the night, sparking a massive search by hundreds of officers while frightened residents stayed locked in their homes.

Authorities have not yet publicly announced a death toll, and a news conference is slated for 9:30 a.m. CT Thursday morning at Lewiston City Hall. 

A police bulletin identified Robert Card, 40, as a person of interest in the attack that sent panicked bowlers scrambling behind pins when shots rang out around 7 p.m. Card was described as a firearms instructor believed to be in the Army Reserve and assigned to a training facility in Saco, Maine.

The document, circulated to law enforcement officials, said Card had been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks in the summer of 2023. It did not provide details about his treatment or condition but said Card had reported “hearing voices and threats to shoot up” the military base. A telephone number listed for Card in public records was not in service.

Lewiston Police said in an earlier Facebook post that they were dealing with an active shooter incident at Schemengees Bar and Grille and at Sparetime Recreation, a bowling alley about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) away.

One bowler, who identified himself only as Brandon, said he heard about 10 shots, thinking the first was a balloon popping.

“I had my back turned to the door. And as soon as I turned and saw it was not a balloon — he was holding a weapon — I just booked it,” he told The Associated Press.

Brandon said he scrambled down the length of the alley, sliding into the pin area and climbing up to hide in the machinery. He was among a busload of survivors who were driven to a middle school in the neighboring city of Auburn to be reunited with family and friends.

“I was putting on my bowling shoes when when it started. I’ve been barefoot for five hours,” he said.

Melinda Small, the owner of Legends Sports Bar and Grill, said her staff immediately locked their doors and moved all 25 customers and employees away from the doors after a customer reported hearing about the shooting at the bowling alley less than a quarter-mile away. Soon, the police flooded the roadway and a police officer eventually escorted everyone out of the building.

“I am honestly in a state of shock. I am blessed that my team responded quickly and everyone is safe,” Small said. “But at the same time, my heart is broken for this area and for what everyone is dealing with. I just feel numb.”

After the shooting, police, many armed with rifles, took up positions while the city descended into eerie quiet — punctuated by occasional sirens — as people hunkered down at home. Schools were closed Thursday in Lewiston, Lisbon and Auburn, as well as municipal offices in Lewiston.

The Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office released two photos of the suspect on its Facebook page that showed the shooter walking into an establishment with a weapon raised to his shoulder.

Two law enforcement officials told The AP that at least 16 people were killed and the toll was expected to rise. However, Michael Sauschuck, commissioner of the Maine Department of Public Safety, declined to provide a specific estimate at a news conference, calling it a “fluid situation.” State police planned to hold a mid-morning news conference Thursday.

The two law enforcement officials said dozens of people also had been wounded. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.

On its website, Central Maine Medical Center said staff were “reacting to a mass casualty, mass shooter event” and were coordinating with area hospitals to take in patients. The hospital was locked down and police, some armed with rifles, stood by the entrances.

Meanwhile, hospitals as far away as Portland, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) to the south, were on alert to potentially receive victims.

An order for residents and business owners to stay inside and off the streets of the city of 37,000 was extended Wednesday night from Lewiston to Lisbon, about 8 miles (13 kilometers) away, after a “vehicle of interest” was found there, authorities said.

Gov. Janet Mills released a statement echoing instructions for people to shelter. She said she had been briefed on the situation and will remain in close contact with public safety officials.

President Joe Biden spoke by phone to Mills and the state’s Senate and House members, offering “full federal support in the wake of this horrific attack,” a White House statement said.

Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent, said he was “deeply sad for the city of Lewiston and all those worried about their family, friends and neighbors” and was monitoring the situation. King’s office said the senator would be headed directly home to Maine on the first flight possible.

Local schools will be closed Thursday and people should shelter in place or seek safety, Superintendent Jake Langlais said, adding: “Stay close to your loved ones. Embrace them.”

Wednesday’s death toll was staggering for a state that in 2022 had 29 homicides the entire year.

Maine doesn’t require permits to carry guns, and the state has a longstanding culture of gun ownership that is tied to its traditions of hunting and sport shooting.

Some recent attempts by gun control advocates to tighten the state’s gun laws have failed. Proposals to require background checks for private gun sales and create a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases failed earlier this year. Proposals that focused on school security and banning bump stocks failed in 2019.

State residents have also voted down some attempts to tighten gun laws in Maine. A proposal to require background checks for gun sales failed in a 2016 public vote.

Law enforcement agencies are continuing their manhunt for the suspected gunman in the mass shootings that left 18 people dead Wednesday in Lewiston, Maine.

Family members have publicly identified some of those victims killed at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley and Schemengees Bar and Grille. Another 13 people were injured.

As the search for Robert Card persisted, authorities converged on a home in nearby Bowdoin, where the suspect lives.

Agents outside the home could be heard calling Card by name, NBC affiliate News Center Maine reported from the scene — though a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, Shannon Moss, issued a statement amid the search noting that it wasn’t immediately known if Card in fact was at the scene on Meadow Road.

“Law enforcement officials are currently on Meadow Road in the town of Bowdoin to execute several search warrants,” Moss said. “The announcements that are being heard over a loud speaker are standard search warrant announcements when executing a warrant to ensure the safety of all involved. It is unknown whether Robert Card is in any of the homes law enforcement will search. Law enforcement officials are simply doing their due diligence by tracking down every lead in an effort to locate and apprehend Card.”

Three law enforcement sources told NBC News Thursday night that, while the officers and agents taking part in the “very active” manhunt were loudly announcing their presence as they searched and re-searched properties and giving him an opportunity to surrender, there was no indication he was at any specific address.

Law enforcement vehicles left the area after 8:30 p.m. Maine court officials later said Card has still not been taken into custody.

The intense focus at the home, which property records link to Card, came about 24 hours after the shooting at a Lewiston bowling alley and a local restaurant, which left at least 18 people dead and 13 wounded.

Much of the area remained under lockdown, and many details on what happened remained unclear Wednesday evening, though officials did offer a rough timeline of how the shooting and subsequent manhunt unfolded.

Seven people were shot and killed at Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, including one female and six males, and eight people were shot and killed at Schemengees Bar and Grille, including seven males inside and one male outside. Multiple other people were transferred to various hospitals, three of whom have died. Eight of the dead have been identified and family notified, while authorities are still working to identify the other 10.

The father of a manager killed at Schemengees told NBC News’ Lester Holt that Card had been to the bar before.

“All of the people over there know him,” said Leroy Walker. “He would actually come to Schemengees; he’d been there off and on.”

“This is a dark day for Maine,” Gov. Janet Mills said at a news conference. “I know it’s hard for us to think about healing when our hearts are broken, but I want every person in Maine to know that we will heal together. We are strong, we are resilient, we are a very caring people, and in the days and weeks ahead, we will need to lean on those qualities more than ever before.”

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, also referred to the pain being felt in Maine at a news conference later Thursday, calling it the state’s worst mass shooting.

“This heinous attack, which has robbed the lives of at least 18 Mainers and injured so many more, is the worst mass shooting that the state of Maine has ever experienced, and could ever imagine,” she said.

Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat who from Lewiston who represents the district, apologetically announced at that news conference he was reversing course on his earlier objection to a federal ban on assault weapons.

“The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown of Lewiston, Maine,” Golden said. “For the good of my community, I will work with any colleague to get this done in the time that I have left in Congress.”

Lewiston Police Chief David St. Pierre added that "this is truly a tragedy that goes beyond comprehension."

An arrest warrant has now been issued for Robert Card, a 40-year-old from Bowdoin with a military background, who was initially only being sought for questioning in the case, part of a massive dragnet set up by local, state and federal law enforcement responding to one of Maine's most brazen criminal acts in years. He is facing eight counts of murder only because the other 10 victims have not yet been identified.

"He should be considered armed and dangerous based on our investigation," Col. William Ross from the Maine State Police said.

Anyone with information on Card's whereabouts is asked to call 911 or the state police tip lines at 207-213-9526 or 207-509-9002.

More on the investigation into the Lewiston, Maine, mass shootings

Mass Shooting Oct 25, 2023

Who is the Lewiston, Maine, active shooter? Latest details on manhunt for Robert Card

"Our reality for today is this suspect is still at large," Commissioner Mike Sauschuck of the Maine Department of Public Safety said. "But we also have an incredibly strong, laser-like focus on bringing this suspect into custody and ultimately to justice."

“We’re actively searching for him," he added. "We don’t know his location and I’ll leave it at that.” 

"This is an all-hands-on-deck approach," St. Pierre noted.

A vehicle of interest was found at the Presumpscot Boat Launch in Lisbon Wednesday night, and, like in nearby Lewiston, town offices there were closed Thursday as officials issued a shelter-in-place order there as well.

Residents of Lisbon are also still being told to continue sheltering in place, with a specific emphasis on those between Mill Sreet in Lisbon Center and Main Street in Lisbon Falls. Many businesses in that area will also be closed. The Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office had yet to retract its advice that all businesses in the area lock down or close.

Several roads are also closed in Lewiston on Thursday as the manhunt continues, including Mollison Way and River Road from Locust Street to South Avenue. Residents will be permitted onto the closed section of River Road.

Updates on the Robert Card manhunt

Mass Shooting Oct 26, 2023

Note found at home of alleged gunman in Maine mass shooting: Law enforcement officials

Lewiston, Maine mass shooting Oct 26, 2023

Family of Maine shooting suspect says his mental health had deteriorated rapidly

Mass Shooting Oct 25, 2023

Who is the Lewiston, Maine, active shooter? Latest details on manhunt for Robert Card

Maine State Police announced shortly after 6 a.m. Thursday that the shelter in place and school closings had been expanded to the town of Bowdoin, where Card is from. People are being told to stay inside their homes while investigators continue their search.

Around 2 p.m., a public safety alert was issued extending the shelter in place order for Androscoggin County and northern Sagadahoc County. "Please make sure your homes and vehicles are secured," the alert read.

Public schools in Lewiston, Lisbon, New Gloucester, Oxford Hills and Portland are also closed Thursday.

Bates College, which is located in Lewiston, remains on lockdown. The school said Thursday morning that one of its employees was present at one of the shooting locations and was injured, but is expected to make a full recovery. Two students were also near one of the crime scenes but were unharmed.

Bowdoin College in nearby Brunswick also canceled in-person classes Thursday due to the ongoing search for the Lewiston shooter. The campus remains in "lockout" mode until further notice.

All Hannaford Supermarkets stores in Maine were closed until at least 10 a.m. on Thursday, the company announced on Facebook. And New Balance, which has three factories in Maine, postponed the groundbreaking on its new facility in Londonderry, New Hampshire, in the wake of the tragedy.

L.L. Bean also announced that it was closing its Freeport stores and their Lewiston and Brunswick manufacturing facilities "out of an abundance of caution."

"Maine is more than just a place to us; it’s our home, our community, and our family," the company said on Facebook. "Our hearts and thoughts are with everyone affected by this tragedy in our beloved state. We urge all of our neighbors to stay safe and look out for one another while we process these events together."

Emergency officials in neighboring New Hampshire said they are also monitoring the shootings and sharing information with local, state and federal partners.

“We stand with our friends and partners in Maine during this time,” Commissioner Robert Quinn of the New Hampshire Department of Safety said. “We are asking all New Hampshire residents to stay vigilant. If you see something suspicious, report it to local authorities or 911.”

“New Hampshire state officials have been in touch with our counterparts in Maine to offer and provide any medical and safety resources needed as they manage this horrific situation,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu added. “Our hearts and prayers are with the people of Maine.”

Officials in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Vermont have said they are also on alert and keeping tabs on the manhunt.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that she has been in touch with Maine Gov. Janet Mills and has offered her state's support "as Maine responds to this heartbreaking tragedy."

Wednesday's shooting left Maine's governor and other leaders horrified. Experts told NBC10 Boston that the person shown on the surveillance footage was evidently prepared to kill people.

Card, the suspect being sought by police, is a firearms instructor trained by the military who was recently committed to a mental health facility, according to a state police bulletin that was circulated to law enforcement officials on Wednesday night.

He is a longtime member of the Army Reserve with no combat deployments, the Army confirmed to NBC News.

Sgt. 1st Class Card is a petroleum supply specialist who enlisted in December 2002, according to Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee. His awards include the Army Achievement Medal, Army Reserve Component Achievement Medal x2, Humanitarian Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal and Army Service Ribbon.

A bulletin put out by the Maine Information and Analysis Center, a database for law enforcement officials, said Card “recently reported mental health issues to include hearing voices and threats to shoot up the National Guard Base in Saco, ME."

The assault rifle style weapon used by Card was purchased legally this year, according to two senior law enforcement officials who spoke to NBC News.

In a news conference on Wednesday night, Sauschuck said hundreds of officers are involved in the search. Officials said on Thursday that over 350 law enforcement personnel are now involved in the search.

He said a "reunification center" was set up at nearby Auburn Middle School for anyone looking to reunite with family members who are unaccounted for.

Hospitals in the area, which is north of Portland and southwest of Augusta, had activated critical care procedures to deal with the influx of casualties.

One bowler who was at Just-In-Time Recreation when the shooting started said he heard about 10 shots, thinking the first was a balloon popping.

“I had my back turned to the door. And as soon as I turned and saw it was not a balloon — he was holding a weapon — I just booked it,” the man, who identified himself only as Brandon, told The Associated Press.

Brandon said he scrambled down the length of the alley, sliding into the pin area and climbing up to hide in the machinery. He was among a busload of survivors who were driven to a middle school in the neighboring city of Auburn to be reunited with family and friends.

“I was putting on my bowling shoes when when it started. I’ve been barefoot for five hours,” he said.

After the shooting, police, many armed with rifles, took up positions while the city descended into eerie quiet — punctuated by occasional sirens — as people hunkered down at home.

President Joe Biden spoke by phone to Mills and the state's Senate and House members, offering “full federal support in the wake of this horrific attack,” a White House statement said. He issued a statement on Thursday condemning the shootings and calling for greater gun safety measures.

"Today, in the wake of yet another tragedy, I urge Republican lawmakers in Congress to fulfill their duty to protect the American people. Work with us to pass a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to enact universal background checks, to require safe storage of guns, and end immunity from liability for gun manufacturers," he said. "This is the very least we owe every American who will now bear the scars — physical and mental — of this latest attack."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Police are hunting for the gunman who killed more than a dozen people in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday, charging a man who’d initially been referred to as a person of interest with murder as he remained at large.

Eighteen people were killed and 13 injured in the shootings at Just-In-Time Recreation, a bowling alley that recently changed its name from Sparetime Recreation, and Schemengees Bar and Grille, a restaurant, Maine Gov. Janet Mills said at a news conference. Police have yet to publicly identify any of the victims.

Robert Card, 40, of Bowdoin, Maine, was the subject of a massive search by local, state and federal law enforcement officials. Lockdowns remained in effect in three Maine communities — Lewiston, Bowdoin and Lisbon — and Card was facing at least eight murder charges, authorities said at a news conference.

Card is a firearms instructor trained by the military and was recently committed to a mental health facility, according to a state police bulletin that was being circulated to law enforcement officials on Wednesday night.

The assault rifle-style weapon Card used in the shooting was purchased legally in 2023, two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the matter told NBC News.

Card’s military unit commander sent him to psychiatric treatment this summer, two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.

As the search for the killer began, law enforcement sources had told NBC News chief justice contributor Jonathan Dienst that police believed they knew who the shooting suspect is and what vehicle he is driving. A vehicle of interest in the search was later found in Lisbon, Maine.

Lewiston police released images showing a man in a brown shirt and blue pants walking into a bowling alley holding an assault-style rifle.

They also shared an image of a white vehicle that may have a front bumper painted black.

All of Androscoggin County, in southwestern Maine north of Portland and southwest of the capital, Augusta, had been under a shelter-in-place order Wednesday night. Local schools were closed in the Lewiston area, including Bates College.

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The shooting left Maine’s governor and other leaders horrified.

Robert Card’s military background, recent history

Card, who has been enlisted since 2002, is a U.S. Army reservist based out of Saco, Maine. He is a petroleum supply specialist.

A Maine State Police bulletin says Card was trained as a firearms instructor at the Army training facility in that state. But Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee disputed that in a statement to NBC10 Boston.

“The Army did not train SFC Card as a firearms instructor, nor did he serve in that capacity for the Army,” Dubee wrote.

The bulletin from state police says Card had been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks in the summer of 2023. It did not provide specific details about his treatment or condition.

It also said Card had reported hearing voices and had threatened to carry out a shooting at the military training base in Saco, Maine.

Police logs obtained by the NBC10 Boston Investigators show that after the shootings, police in Saco responded to the Army Reserve facility there as a precaution.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press that Card had been taken by police for an evaluation after military officials became concerned that he was acting erratically in mid-July.

The official said commanders in the Army Reserve’s 3rd Battalion, 304th Infantry Regiment became concerned about Card’s behavior while the unit was training at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York.

The official said military commanders became concerned about Card’s safety and asked for the police to be called. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss information about the incident and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Dubee said that while Card’s unit supported the training at West Point in July, “there are no records to indicate he instructed or participated in any training.”

West Point officials tell the NBC10 Boston Investigators that Card wasn’t involved in any type of instructor role and didn’t have interactions with cadets.

A law enforcement source with direct knowledge tells NBC10 Boston that authorities pinged Card’s phone to the family home on West Road in Bowdoin, and that inside, items were found stockpiled. Cold weather gear and hunting gear were found, but Card was nowhere to be found.

A telephone number listed for Card in public records was not in service.

Card attended the University of Maine between 2001 and 2004, studying engineering, the school confirmed to NBC News.

The father of a manager killed at Schemengees told NBC News’ Lester Holt that Card had been to the bar before.

“All of the people over there know him,” said Leroy Walker. “He would actually come to Schemengees; he’d been there off and on.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Lewiston, Maine mass shootings Oct 25, 2023

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Gallion, 29, was shot as he entered the store’s front door with his girlfriend in a predominantly Black neighborhood. The killing marked him as another victim in the latest racist attack in the U.S.

“My brother shouldn’t have lost his life,” his sister, Latiffany Gallion, said Sunday. “A simple day of going to the store, and he’s taken away from us forever.”

The gunman, 21-year-old Ryan Palmeter, opened fire Saturday using guns he bought legally despite a past involuntary commitment for a mental health exam. Authorities say he left behind white supremacist ramblings that read like “the diary of a madman.”

The other two people slain were identified as Angela Michelle Carr, 52, who was shot in her car, and store employee Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre, Jr., 19, who was shot as he tried to flee.

On Sunday, family members recalled Gallion’s sense of humor and work ethic. He saw his job as a restaurant manager as a way to provide for his daughter, Je Asia.

Although his relationship with the child’s mother didn’t last, they worked together to raise Je Asia. That earned him lasting affection from Sabrina Rozier, the child’s maternal grandmother.

“He never missed a beat,” Rozier told reporters Sunday evening after a prayer vigil near the shooting scene. “He got her every weekend. As a matter of fact, he was supposed to have her (Saturday).”

Gallion attended St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Bishop John Guns told a crowd during the prayer vigil.

“In two weeks I have to preach a funeral of a man who should still be alive,” Guns said. “He was not a gangster, he was not a thug — he was a father who gave his life to Jesus and was trying to get it together.”

As the child sat nearby in a pink dress with long braids in her hair, Rozier said the girl last spoke to her father at about 2:30 a.m. Saturday when she was having trouble falling asleep.

“We’re trying to decide how to tell his one and only daughter that he’s not coming back,” Rozier said. “I’m her grandmother and I don’t know how to tell her. I don’t have the words.”

Robert Bowers spewed hatred of Jews and espoused white supremacist beliefs online before methodically planning and carrying out the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, where members of three congregations had gathered for Sabbath worship and study. Bowers, a truck driver from suburban Baldwin, also wounded two worshippers and five responding police officers.

The same federal jury that convicted the 50-year-old Bowers on 63 criminal counts recommended Wednesday that he be put to death for an attack whose impacts continue to reverberate nearly five years later. A judge will formally impose the sentence later.

The verdict came after a lengthy trial in which jurors heard in chilling detail how Bowers reloaded at least twice, stepped over the bloodied bodies of his victims to look for more people to shoot, and surrendered only when he ran out of ammunition. In the sentencing phase, grieving family members told the jury about the lives that Bowers took — a 97-year-old woman and intellectually disabled brothers among them — and the unrelenting pain of their loss. Survivors testified about their own lasting pain, both physical and emotional.

Through it all, Bowers showed little reaction to the proceeding that would decide his fate — typically looking down at papers or screens at the defense table. He even told a psychiatrist that he thought the trial was helping to spread his antisemitic message.

It was the first federal death sentence imposed during the presidency of Joe Biden, whose 2020 campaign included a pledge to end capital punishment. Biden’s Justice Department has placed a moratorium on federal executions and has declined to authorize the death penalty in hundreds of new cases where it could apply. But federal prosecutors said death was the appropriate punishment for Bowers, citing the vulnerability of his mainly elderly victims and his hate-based targeting of a religious community. Most victims’ families said Bowers should die for his crimes.

Bowers’ lawyers never contested his guilt, focusing their efforts on trying to save his life. They presented evidence of a horrific childhood marked by trauma and neglect. They also claimed Bowers had severe, untreated mental illness, saying he killed out of a delusional belief that Jews were helping to cause a genocide of white people. The defense argued that schizophrenia and brain abnormalities made Bowers more susceptible to being influenced by the extremist content he found online.

The prosecution denied mental illness had anything to do with it, saying Bowers knew exactly what he was doing when he violated the sanctity of a house of worship by opening fire on terrified congregants with an AR-15 rifle and other weapons, shooting everyone he could find.

Bowers blasted his way into Tree of Life on Oct. 27, 2018, and killed members of the Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life congregations, which shared the synagogue building.

The victims were Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; Dan Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 87; and Irving Younger, 69.

Bowers, who traded gunfire with responding officers and was shot three times, told police at the scene that “all these Jews need to die,” according to testimony. Ahead of the attack, he posted, liked or shared a stream of virulently antisemitic content on Gab, a social media platform popular with the far right. He has expressed no remorse for the killings, telling mental health experts he saw himself as a soldier in a race war, took pride in the attack and wished he had shot more people.

In emotional testimony, the victims’ family members described what Bowers took from them. “My world has fallen apart,” Sharyn Stein, Dan Stein’s widow, told the jury.

Survivors and other affected by the attack will have another opportunity to address the court — and Bowers — when he is formally sentenced by the judge.

The synagogue has been closed since the shootings. The Tree of Life congregation is working on an overhauled synagogue complex that would house a sanctuary, museum, memorial and center for fighting antisemitism.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty earlier this year to nearly 50 federal hate crime charges in the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, making it one of the U.S. government’s largest hate crime cases.

Crusius, wearing a jumpsuit and shackles, showed no visible reaction as the verdict was read.

Police say Crusius drove more than 700 miles from his home near Dallas to target Hispanics with an AK-style rifle inside and outside the store. Moments before the attack began, Crusius posted a racist screed online that warned of a Hispanic “invasion” of Texas.

In the years since the shooting, Republicans have described migrants crossing the southern U.S. border as an “invasion,” waving off critics who say the rhetoric fuels anti-immigrant views and violence.

Crusius pleaded guilty in February after federal prosecutors took the death penalty off the table. But Texas prosecutors have said they will try to put Crusius on death row when he stands trial in state court. That trial date has not yet been set.

Joe Spencer, Crusius’ attorney, told the judge before the sentencing that his client had a “broken brain” and that he had lost touch with reality.

“Patrick’s thinking is at odds with reality … resulting in delusional thinking,” Spencer told the court.

The sentencing by U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama in El Paso followed two days of impact statements from relatives of the victims, including citizens of Mexico. In addition to the dead, more than two dozen people were injured and numerous others were severely traumatized as they hid or fled.

One by one, family members used their first opportunity since the shooting to directly address Crusius, describing how their lives have been upended by grief and pain. Some forgave Crusius. One man displayed photographs of his slain father, insisting that the gunman look at them.

Bertha Benavides’ husband of 34 years, Arturo, was among those killed.

“You left children without their parents, you left spouses without their spouses, and we still need them,” she told Crusius.

During the initial statements from victims, Crusius occasionally swiveled in his seat or bobbed his head with little sign of emotion. On Thursday, his eyes appeared to well up as victims condemned the brutality of the shootings and demanded Crusius respond and account for his actions. At one point, Crusius consulted with a defense attorney at his side and gestured that he would not answer.

Crusius’ family did not appear in the courtroom during the sentencing phase.

The attack was the deadliest of a dozen mass shootings in the U.S. linked to hate crimes since 2006, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.

The people who were killed ranged in age from a 15-year-old high school athlete to several elderly grandparents. They included immigrants, a retired city bus driver, teachers, tradesmen including a former iron worker, and several Mexican nationals who had crossed the U.S. border on routine shopping trips.

Two teenage girls recounted their narrow escape from Crusius’ rampage as they participated in a fundraiser for their youth soccer team outside the store. Parents were wounded and the soccer coach, Guillermo Garcia, died months later from injuries in the attack.

Both youths said they still are haunted by their fear of another shooting when they are in public venues.

“He was shot at close range by a coward and there was his innocent blood, everywhere,” said Kathleen Johnson, whose husband David was among the victims. “I don’t know when I’ll be the same. … The pain you have caused is indescribable.”

Gun violence flared as the U.S. celebrated the Fourth of July holiday, leaving more than a dozen dead and almost 60 wounded — including children as young as 2 years old — in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Louisiana, Texas, Florida and Washington, D.C.

The Philadelphia shooting is the country’s 29th mass killing of 2023 in which four or more people died, not including the assailant, within a 24-hour period, according to a database on July 5 that is maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

So far this year, the nation has witnessed the highest number on record of mass killings and deaths to this point in a single year. There have been more than 550 mass killing incidents since 2006, according to the database, in which at least 2,900 people have died and at least 2,000 people have been injured.

Here’s what happened in each U.S. mass killing this year.

Kellogg, Idaho: June 18

A 31-year-old man is accused of fatally shooting four members of a neighboring family in their apartment on Father’s Day. The man was upset that the neighbor’s 18-year-old son had reportedly exposed himself to the man’s children, a police document alleges.

Sequatchie, Tennessee: June 15

A 48-year-old man is thought to be responsible for killing himself and five others — including three children and his estranged wife — in a home where police responded to a shooting and arrived to find the residence ablaze, authorities said. A seventh person suffered gunshot wounds and was found alive at the home after firefighters extinguished the flames.

Mesa, Arizona: May 26

A 20-year-old man shot four men to death and wounded a woman in a 12-hour crime spree in metro Phoenix, authorities said. He told police that he met the victims at random that day at a range of places, including a park and a convenience store, and became angry when the subject of drugs came up.

Nash, Texas: May 23

Authorities jailed an 18-year-old man in connection with the shootings of his parents, sister and brother inside a home. A victim’s co-worker who went to the home after one of the victims failed to show up for work told police that the man said “he had killed his family because they were cannibals, and they were going to eat him.”

Allen, Texas: May 6

A 33-year-old man with an arsenal of legally-purchased firearms killed eight people and wounded seven others at a Dallas-area shopping center. He had posted online about his white supremacist and misogynistic views. A police officer fatally shot him within four minutes.

Lake Wales, Florida: May 2

A 38-year-old man was suspected of fatally shooting a woman and her three children after police were called to an apartment complex where they found the bodies. After an hourslong standoff at a motel, police fatally shot the man.

Henryetta, Oklahoma: May 1

A 39-year-old man fatally shot his wife, her three children and their two friends before killing himself, authorities said. They were all found dead on his rural property. He was a convicted rapist who had been freed from prison early, despite facing new sex charges in a separate case.

Mojave, California: April 30

Four people were found fatally shot inside an RV in a remote Mojave Desert community, authorities said. There were no immediate arrests, but two people were being sought for questioning as “persons of interest.”

Cleveland, Texas: April 28

A 38-year-old man was arrested after a four-day manhunt. Authorities allege that the man charged into a neighbor’s home and killed five people, including a 9-year-old boy, after his neighbors asked him to stop firing his AR-style rifle because a baby was trying to sleep.

Bowdoin, Maine: April 18

A 32-year-old man confessed to fatally shooting four people, including his parents, at a home. From there he fled and fired shots at moving vehicles on a highway. Several vehicles were hit by gunfire but the three people injured were a family all in the same car.

Dadeville, Alabama: April 15

Six suspects — ages 15 to 20 — were charged with reckless murder in connection with a shooting at a Sweet 16 birthday party that killed four people and injured at least 32 others. Two high school seniors were killed. The other two killed were 19 and 23.

Louisville, Kentucky: April 10

A 25-year-old bank employee armed with a rifle opened fire at his workplace, killing five people — including a close friend of Kentucky’s governor — while livestreaming the attack on Instagram, authorities said. Police arrived as shots were still being fired inside Old National Bank and killed the shooter during an exchange of gunfire.

Monroe, Louisiana: March 31

A 37-year-old man was arrested on arson and murder charges after a fire killed four people in a home, KNOE-TV reported.

Nashville, Tennessee: March 27

A 28-year-old killed three children and three adults in a shooting at a small Christian elementary school before being killed by police. The shooter was a former student there. Police have said the shooter “was assigned female at birth” but used masculine pronouns on social media.

Sumter, South Carolina: March 21

A 42-year-old former soldier shot and killed three children as they slept in their home while their mother frantically sought help, authorities said. He also killed an Army soldier who was at the home before killing himself. The shooter and the children’s mother were divorced.

Birmingham, Alabama: March 13 to 14

A 28-year-old man was suspected of killing four people in overnight shootings. Authorities said the man approached a police officer and said he had shot two people in Birmingham and two people in St. Clair County.

Dallas, Texas: March 12

An 18-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman were charged in the fatal shootings of four people at an apartment. They told police they’d broken into the home to take money. The man admitted to shooting all of the victims. The woman had dated one of the victims, and they were involved in a custody dispute over their son. An infant was found unharmed at the scene.

Miami Lakes, Florida: March 10

Police found three females and two males dead from apparent gunshot wounds inside a home, officials said. The wounds of one man appeared to be self-inflicted, leading investigators to believe the case was a murder-suicide.

Cocoa, Florida: March 1

A 36-year-old man was arrested after fatally shooting his teenage daughter, her mother and two other people, authorities said. Deputies responded after one of two surviving children had called a relative for help.

Daphne, Alabama: Feb. 22

A 21-year-old man was accused of killing his grandparents, his brother and a family friend with a handgun and pickaxe. Their bodies were found in the backyard of his grandparents’ home and inside a bedroom in the house, police said.

Arkabutla, Mississippi: Feb. 17

A 52-year-old man shot and killed six people including his ex-wife and stepfather at multiple locations in a tiny rural community, authorities said. The man was armed with a shotgun and two handguns. A family friend said he had a history of mental illness. One victim was shot and killed while sitting in a pickup truck outside a convenience store.

Luttrell, Tennessee: Jan. 29

A 52-year-old man who complained of having “a devil in his head” fatally shot four children in his home before setting the residence ablaze and shooting himself, according to a prosecutor. The children were ages 5 to 15.

Half Moon Bay, California: Jan. 23

A 66-year-old man was charged with killing seven people in back-to-back shootings at two mushroom farms. He pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors said he opened fire at the mushroom farm where he worked, killing four co-workers and wounding another one. They said he then drove to a mushroom farm he was fired from in 2015 and fatally shot three former co-workers.

Monterey Park, California: Jan. 21

A 72-year-old man opened fire on a mostly elderly crowd at a Lunar New Year dance, killing 11 people and wounding nine. The man later died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The massacre has been called the deadliest shooting in Los Angeles County history.

Goshen, California: Jan. 16

Authorities announced more than two dozen arrests during a gang crackdown following the fatal shootings of six people — including a teenage mother and her baby — that investigators believe stemmed from a gang rivalry. Two men have pleaded not guilty to the murder charges.

Cleveland, Ohio: Jan. 13

A 41-year-old man was accused of fatally shooting his father, sister and nephew as well as another man and critically wounding an 8-year-old girl. The man pleaded not guilty. Police alleged that he shot victims in the head in different rooms of a home, then flagged down a police cruiser and directed officers to the scene.

High Point, North Carolina: Jan. 7

A 45-year-old man fatally shot his wife and three children and then himself. Authorities said all five lived together in the home. Two others escaped the house. One of the survivors was a relative of the family and another was an acquaintance. Both were in their 20s.

Enoch, Utah: Jan. 4

A 42-year-old man fatally shot his five children, his mother-in-law and his wife and then killed himself two weeks after his wife filed for divorce. Child protective services had opened an investigation of the man on child abuse and threats to his family just weeks before the killing.

Baltimore Police Department Acting Commissioner Richard Worley told reporters there were a total of 30 victims during a press conference at the scene.

The shooting took place just after 12:30 a.m. at a block party in the Brooklyn Homes area in the southern part of the city, Worley said.

All of the victims were adults. Nine victims were transported by ambulance and 20 victims walked into area hospitals with injuries from the shooting, Worley said.

An 18-year-old woman was found dead at the scene and a 20-year-old man was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after, police said.

“I want those who are responsible to hear me, and hear me very clearly,” Mayor Brandon Scott said at the scene. “We will not stop until we find you, and we will find you. Until then, I hope that every single breath you take, that you think about the lives that you took, think about the lives that you impacted here tonight.”

No arrests were made immediately after the shooting. Scott asked anyone with information to come forward to assist investigators locate the “cowards” who were responsible for the shooting.

Authorities said the crime scene was extensive and that it will take some time for detectives to work it.

“Treat this as if it were your family,” Scott said. “How you would want people to treat it if you were mourning, if this was your neighborhood, if this was an event in your community that this happened at. We want you to treat it that way because that’s how we have to treat each other as Baltimoreans.”

Five other people were wounded Tuesday in the shooting, which sent hundreds fleeing in panic outside the state capital’s city-owned Altria Theater after the graduation ceremony for Huguenot High School.

Tameeka Jackson-Smith told The Associated Press her son, Shawn Jackson, 18, and his father, Renzo Smith, 36, died in the shooting. She said her and Smith’s 9-year-old daughter was hit by a car in the chaos that erupted afterward. The girl was treated for leg injuries and released from the hospital, Jackson-Smith said.

Jackson-Smith said the family had watched the graduation, then got separated in a large crowd after they walked outside. “He was so happy — oh my God — because he got to graduate. He worked hard.”

She said she was walking toward her husband and son in a nearby park to reunite when she saw a man run up behind them and start shooting.

“I don’t know if he was shooting at everybody because so many people got shot all over in the area. There were like seven people on the ground,” she said.

Suspect Amari Pollard, 19, was arraigned Wednesday morning on two counts of second-degree murder, Colette McEachin, Richmond’s top prosecutor, said in an email to The Associated Press. Pollard said he intends to hire an attorney, so the court continued the case until a hearing later this month, McEachin wrote.

Pollard was ordered held without bond. Court records did not yet list an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

Police believe the suspect knew at least one of the victims.

At least 12 others were injured or treated for anxiety due to the mayhem, according to police.

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There was an active shooter at the Texas mall where she works as an assistant store manager. And she was searching desperately for information, praying. Was the gunman dead? Were her coworkers dead? What was happening?

So with law enforcement in the Dallas area town of Allen releasing information slowly on that horrible May 6 afternoon, she turned to social media for answers, stumbling across videos showing the bodies of some of the eight who were slain. Desperately she texted her coworkers.

“That’s where all of my information came from was what I saw on Twitter. And, you know, nobody was really releasing any information on what actually happened,” she said now, nearly two weeks later.

The shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets this month has law enforcement public information officers from around the country talking. Social media, they say, has accelerated everything. Now everyone can post images from their phone. That means if the police don’t talk, reporters and the public will simply go online, as happened in Allen.

And that presents a major problem, said Katie Nelson, social media and public relations coordinator for the Mountain View Police Department in northern California. Nelson teaches about crisis management and social media best practices. And these days, she said, when it comes to responding, “The luxury of time does not exist.”

POLICE APPROACHES HAVE EVOLVED

Police began to harness social media a decade ago, most famously after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. The four-day manhunt ended with police tweeting: “CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.”

It was groundbreaking at the time, says Yael Bar Tur, a police communication consultant and former director of social media for the New York City police department. Now, she says, that it is the basic level expected of law enforcement.

“It’s not enough just to be on social media, you have to be good at it,” she says. “At the end of the day, you know, we have to use this tool because if you don’t, it is going to be used against you.”

In Allen, the mall shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. Allen police sent their first tweet around 4:20 p.m., announcing simply that police were at the mall and that an active investigation was underway. Seeley continued to fear that her coworkers at the Crocs store were hiding and the gunman was still on the loose.

At nearly 7 p.m., police in Allen said an officer had “neutralized the threat.” That meant he was dead. But the often-used term can be confusing to the public, says Julie Parker, a former broadcast journalist and law enforcement public information officer who now advises government agencies on how to respond to critical incidents.

“Normal people who don’t work in law enforcement don’t know what the word neutralized means,” Parker says.

Adding to the situation, the initial news conferences were brief and infrequent. One lasted less than two minutes, and police took no questions.

Eventually, she learned that her coworkers had survived, but a security guard she knew was among the dead. Twenty-year-old Christian LaCour had helped jump-start a customer’s car just a few days earlier.

“Very anxiety-inducing,” Seeley said of the whole experience.

MAKING THE BEST OF SOCIAL MEDIA

How to harness social media in the best ways – and quickly – was on everyone’s mind last week as public information officers gathered at a midyear conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

“You had a little more time to get information out five or six years ago. The expectation wasn’t there that it would be immediate, and I think it is now,” says Sarah Boyd, who is on the executive board of the association’s group on public communication.

She says her colleagues often text each other to discuss how communications are handled after tragedies. The responsibility weighs on her; she is well aware that the messages police tweet in the midst of a mass shooting might be read by someone hiding from the shooter.

“All they’ve got is their phone, and that tweet is their lifeline,” says Boyd, a former newspaper reporter. She is now the public relations manager at the Clay County, Missouri, Sheriff’s Office in the Kansas City area.

This newest crop of public information officers, who like Boyd are much more likely to be former reporters themselves than in the past, also are demanding to have a seat at the table when officers are planning how to respond to mass casualty events and police shootings.

They note that the flow of information can go both ways, generating tips from the public, who might have cell phone or Ring doorbell video that could help investigators.

It can be challenging, though, with police nationally struggling to regain the public’s trust in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in 2020 and the protests that followed. Many factors – for example, is the suspect still on the loose? – play a role in what can be released. And even if the suspect is killed, the investigation isn’t over; law enforcement still must determine whether the shooter acted alone, says Alex del Carmen, an associate dean of the School of Criminology at Tarleton State University in Texas.

Missteps after the mass shooting at Uvalde, when law enforcement released shifting and at times contradictory information, show the importance of getting details right.

“People were just scratching their heads on the second or third day,” del Carmen says. He has sympathy, though, for the officers faced with communicating the unimaginable; entire careers can be defined by moments like these.

A MODEL FOR QUICKER INFORMATION

The bulk of the nation’s police forces are small, and there are vast differences in what each state allows them to release. In Missouri, for instance, 911 recordings are inaccessible to the public.

The public itself has no such restrictions, though.

After a man killed 10 people at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, in March 2021, an independent, part-time journalist began live-streaming on his YouTube channel before officers even arrived. The effect can be instantaneous – and, for authorities, quite dizzying.

“We’re putting out information quicker than I’ve ever seen before,” says Boulder police public information officer Dionne Waugh. Given the speed of social media, she says, there’s simply no choice.

Amid a crush of media, each victim’s family was assigned its own public information officer. All the while, what had happened was hitting Waugh personally; the victims included police Officer Eric Talley, a friend who died rushing into the store.

Though she described the experience as “life-changing” and “horrible,” she has led trainings in the years that have followed. She hopes that reliving it will help others.

Sadly, it wasn’t long after Nashville Police Department spokesperson Don Aaron asked her to speak that he faced his own mass shooting. In March, a shooter killed three children and three adults at a Christian school in his city before being gunned down by police.

The police tweets were fast. The very first one announced that the shooter was dead. Surveillance video was released before the 10 p.m. nightly newscast. Body camera footage came out the following morning, in line with the department’s policy of releasing such video quickly. The stream of information was fast, continual and generally accurate.

“As we have made decisions about releasing body cam in police-shooting situations, I have said to some of my colleagues across the country, especially when this first started, that I was flying a jet trying not to crash it,” says Aaron, a 32-year police veteran. “And so far, it hasn’t crashed.”

A cluster of eight crosses installed outside the entrance to the outdoor mall was adorned with the names of victims. On Monday, the names of 35-year-old Cindy Cho, 37-year-old Kyu Cho and 3-year-old James Cho were each added to a cross.

The Plano family’s 6-year-old son William was also hurt in the explosion of gunfire and remains hospitalized after being released from the ICU. Witnesses said his mother died trying to shield him from the shooting.

A fundraiser was created to provide financial support to the family and their only survivor. A message shared on the GoFundMe page said William recently celebrated his sixth birthday and that “an afternoon that should have been filled with light, love and celebration, unfortunately, was cut short by another mass shooting massacre.”

The Wylie ISD said two Cox Elementary School students also died in the shooting. The district identified the students as 11-year-old fourth-grader Daniela Mendoza and 8-year-old second-grader Sofia Mendoza. The girls’ mother, Ilda, remains in critical condition, according to the district.

“Words cannot express the sadness we feel as we grieve the loss of our students. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Mendoza family, the families of the victims, and all those affected by this senseless tragedy,” said David Vinson, Wylie ISD superintendent.

The other three people killed in the shooting have been identified as 26-year-old Aishwarya Thatikonda, of McKinney, who worked as an engineer; 20-year-old Christian LaCour, who worked as a security guard at the mall and was credited Tuesday by Allen Chief of Police Brian Harvey as evacuating one person before he was shot; and 32-year-old Elio Cumana-Rivas, of Dallas.

Telemundo 39 spoke to Cumana-Rivas’ father who is a university teacher in Venezuela. He shared photos of his son and said he was out with friends at the outlet when they split up to go their separate ways after finishing shopping.

Hundreds of people gathered throughout the day outside of the mall entrance, paying respects, offering prayers and concern for the victims and their families. A memorial continues to grow with flowers, stuffed animals and other items being added around the two sets of crosses installed at the outlet entrance.

SIX INJURED IN ALLEN SHOOTING STILL RECEIVING TREATMENT

On Monday, NBC 5 confirmed there were six patients at three hospitals still receiving treatment.

Three patients at Medical City McKinney remained in critical condition and one patient was in fair condition. Another patient at Medical City Plano was reported in fair condition and a child at Medical City Children’s Hospital was in good condition.

Irvin Walker II was one of the first victims to be shot according to a gofundme page. Civil Rights attorney Daryl K. Washington is representing Walker, and in a statement says Walker is, “recovering after a major life-saving surgery.”

Further information about the ages and conditions of the others injured has not been shared.

ALLEN OFFICER WHO STOPPED GUNMAN A “BRAVE SERVANT”

The Allen police officer credited for running towards the gunfire and stopping the shooter is asking for privacy as he too processes the tragic events that unfolded Saturday, a representative said.

“The officer sprinted towards high power rifle fire as everyone else ran away. He’s a brave servant with a gentle heart and embodies the best the law enforcement profession has to offer. He’s doing well and would appreciate privacy as he continues to process this life altering tragedy,” said Zach Horn, a lawyer representing the officer, in a statement Monday afternoon.

The officer has not been publically identified.

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Steven Spainhouer’s son works at the shopping center and called him when he couldn’t get through to 911. Spainhouer was nearby and rushed to the scene, arriving before the police.

He said he performed CPR on victims and helped find rides to the hospital. But for some others, there was little he could do to help.

“The injuries were so severe there was nothing I could do,” Spainhouer said.

His description of the scene is heartbreaking. Spainhouer recounted finding a girl near bushes in a praying position and reached down to check her pulse. When he turned her over, “she had no face,” he said.

“I found a 4-year-old under a lady, got the 4-year-old, 5-year-old, around the corner. He said he was OK, he was covered in blood from head to toe,” he said. “There wasn’t anything I could do.”

Spainhouer’s son sheltered inside the H&M store with fellow employees and shoppers. Father and son reunited when authorities began evacuating the mall.

“My son came out, and I wanna tell you, to see your son come out with his hands over his head and have to walk past dead bodies it’s not something any parent or anybody should ever have to see or experience,” Spainhouer said.

He is now joining a growing chorus of people touched by gun violence across the country who are calling for “meaningful gun control legislation.”

“I don’t care if you are Republican or Democrat, we gotta find a consensus on how to make our communities safer and still respect the rights of people to have their guns if they want to have them,” Spainhouer said.

The gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others – three critically — before being killed by a police officer who happened to be nearby answering an unrelated call.

Two senior law enforcement officials tell NBC News the man who opened fire was armed with a rifle of some kind as well as a handgun. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss details of an ongoing investigation.

Officials told The Associated Press the weapons included an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun.

Spainhouer told NBC News’ Morgan Chesky that in the hours after the shooting, he was processing a lot of emotions, and his heartbreak has turned into anger over gun violence. He said, “Mental health didn’t fire that gun,” the victims were killed by bullets.

After witnessing the carnage the guns caused, he believes talking about the shooting will help him process the trauma. He said H&M is offering counseling to his son.

With the outpouring of support for the victims of the mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets, GoFundMe has launched a centralized hub for all verified fundraisers related to the shooting. The online fundraising platform said it was working around the clock to make sure that all funds donated go directly to survivors or the families of victims.

ALLEN MALL SHOOTING

allen mall shooting May 7, 2023

Texas Mall Gun Identified, Had 2 Guns and More in His Vehicle: Sources

The gunman who killed at least eight people and wounded at least seven others at the Allen Premium Outlets Saturday has been identified.

Two senior law enforcement officials tell NBC News the man who opened fire was 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia and he had a tactical vest and was armed with a rifle of some kind as well as a handgun. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss details of an ongoing investigation.

Law Enforcement officials also tell NBC News authorities are now investigating this as a case of racial or ethnically motivated extremism.

Witnesses described seeing a man, who they believed to be the gunman, wearing a mask and police-like attire.

One of the senior law enforcement officials said more weapons and ammunition were found in his car.

The suspected shooter interacted with neo-Nazi and white supremacist content online, the two senior law enforcement officials told NBC. NBC News has not seen any of the suspect’s accounts thus far, and the officials stressed it’s still early in the investigation and too early to ascribe a motive.

According to one of the officials, he was found with a patch with a right-wing acronym on his chest. It’s not known at this time what the right-wing acronym is.

The gunman was killed by an Allen police officer who happened to be at the outdoor mall on an unrelated call when he heard shots fired. Allen Chief of Police Brian Harvey said the officer ran toward the gunfire, found the gunman and “neutralized” him.

Officials said Saturday they believe the gunman acted alone and that there was no ongoing threat to the community.

Officials told The Associated Press that the suspect had been staying at a nearby motel which was being searched as well as a home in the Dallas area connected to the man. The official told AP the weapons included an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun.

The mall remained closed Sunday, bullet holes could be seen in cars in the mall parking lot as well as in storefronts.

Authorities told everyone to pick up cars at Edge Skate Park at 201 St. Mary Drive, where they will be transported to the Outlets to retrieve their vehicles. 

The FBI advises to not go directly to the Outlets:

“Be sure to have your car keys with you. This service will end at 2 p.m. The Outlets will remain closed, and no one will be allowed to enter any store.”

“Individuals wishing to retrieve their cars should be dropped off at the Senior Center, or if needed, park next door at the Edge at Allen Station Skate Park, on the west side of the Senior Center. Please drop off only one individual for vehicle retrieval. Be sure to have your car keys with you.”

An ATF spokesperson told NBC 5 that agents would trace the firearms involved in the attack.

Witnesses or anyone with footage was asked to contact the FBI by calling 1-800-225-5324 (800-CALL-FBI), digital media can also be uploaded to FBI.gov/allenmallshooting.

On Sunday, the Allen Police Department said four patients were being treated at Medical City McKinney, one in fair condition and three in critical condition. One patient was transferred to Medical City Plano, a Level I Trauma Center, and is listed in fair condition. One patient was transferred to Medical City Children’s Hospital and is in fair condition. Another was treated at a different area hospital.

Medical City Healthcare told NBC 5 Saturday that shooting victims ranged in age from 5 years old to 61 years old.

With the outpouring of support for the victims of the mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets, GoFundMe has launched a centralized hub for all verified fundraisers related to the shooting. The online fundraising platform said it was working around the clock to make sure that all funds donated go directly to survivors or the families of victims.

ALLEN MALL SHOOTING

allen mall shooting May 7, 2023

Mall Shooting Witness: ‘The Injuries Were So Severe There Was Nothing I Could Do'

Two law enforcement officials named the gunman as Mauricio Garcia, who was fatally shot by a police officer who happened to be near the suburban Dallas mall. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss details of an ongoing investigation

According to law enforcement officials, a preliminary review of what is believed to be the shooter’s social media accounts reveal hundreds of posts that include racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist rhetoric, including neo-Nazi material and material espousing white supremacy, NBC News reports.

At the time of the massacre, he was wearing a patch on his chest that included the acronym “rwds,” according to two senior law enforcement officials. Authorities believe the letters stand for “right wing death squad,” a phrase used in far-right online spaces, one of the senior law enforcement officials added.

NBC News had not seen any of the suspect’s accounts and the officials stressed it was too early to ascribe a motive.

The official said police also found multiple weapons at the scene after the suspect was fatally shot by a police officer. The weapons included an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun, according to the official.

Officials told The Associated Press that the suspect had been staying at a nearby motel. One official said investigators have been searching the motel and a home in the Dallas area connected to the suspect.

COMMUNITY MOURNS VICTIMS

The gunman’s name emerged as the community of Allen mourned for the dead and awaited word on the seven people who were wounded.

John Mark Caton, senior pastor at Cottonwood Creek Church, about two miles from the mall, offered prayers during his weekly service for victims, first responders and the shoppers and employees who “walked out past things they never should have seen.”

“Some of our people were there. Some perhaps in this room. Some of our students were working in those stores and will be changed forever by this,” Caton said.

Recalling phone conversations with police officers, he said: “There wasn’t an officer that I talked to yesterday that at some point in the call didn’t cry.”

The church planned an evening prayer vigil in the aftermath of the shooting.

Police did not immediately provide details about the victims at Allen Premium Outlets, a sprawling outdoor shopping center, but witnesses reported seeing children among them. Some said they also saw what appeared to be a police officer and a mall security guard unconscious on the ground.

A 16-year-old pretzel stand employee, Maxwell Gum, described a virtual stampede of shoppers. He and others sheltered in a storage room.

“We started running. Kids were getting trampled,” Gum said. “My co-worker picked up a 4-year-old girl and gave her to her parents.”

Dashcam video circulating online showed the gunman getting out of a car and shooting at people on the sidewalk. More than three dozen shots could be heard as the vehicle that was recording the video drove off.

Allen Fire Chief Jonathan Boyd said seven people, including the shooter, died at the scene. Nine victims were taken to hospitals. Two of them died.

Three of the wounded remained in critical condition Sunday, and four were stable, Boyd said.

An Allen Police Department officer was in the area on an unrelated call when he heard shots at 3:36 p.m., the department wrote on Facebook.

“The officer engaged the suspect and neutralized the threat. He then called for emergency personnel,” the post said.

Mass killings have happened with staggering frequency in the United States this year, with an average of about one per week, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

President Joe Biden was briefed on the shooting in Allen, and the administration offered support to local officials, the White House said.

In a statement, Biden said the assailant wore tactical gear and fired an AR-15-style weapon. He urged Congress to enact tighter restrictions on firearms and ammunition.

“Such an attack is too shocking to be so familiar. And yet, American communities have suffered roughly 200 mass shootings already this year, according to leading counts,” said Biden, who ordered flags lowered to half-staff.

Republicans in Congress, he said, “cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug.”

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has signed laws easing firearms restrictions following past mass shootings, called the mall attack an “unspeakable tragedy.”

A live aerial broadcast from a news station showed armored trucks and other law enforcement vehicles outside the mall. More than 30 police cruisers with lights flashing blocked an entrance. Multiple ambulances were at the scene in the city of 105,000 residents about 25 miles north of downtown Dallas.

Video shared on social media showed people running through a parking lot amid the sound of gunshots.

Fontayne Payton, 35, was at H&M when he heard gunshots through his headphones.

“It was so loud, it sounded like it was right outside,” Payton said.

People in the store scattered before employees ushered the group into the fitting rooms and then a lockable back room, he said. When they were given the all-clear to leave, Payton saw the store had broken windows and a trail of blood to the door. Discarded sandals and bloodied clothes lay nearby.

Once outside, Payton saw bodies.

“I pray it wasn’t kids, but it looked like kids,” he said. The bodies were covered in white towels, slumped over bags on the ground. “It broke me when I walked out to see that.”

Further away, he saw the body of a heavyset man wearing all black. He assumed it was the shooter, Payton said, because unlike the other bodies it had not been covered.

Tarakram Nunna, 25, and Ramakrishna Mullapudi, 26, said they saw what appeared to be three people motionless on the ground, including one who seemed to be a police officer and another who resembled a mall security guard.

Another shopper, Sharkie Mouli, 24, said he hid in a Banana Republic. As he left, he saw someone who looked like a police officer lying unconscious next to another unconscious person outside the store.

“I have seen his gun lying right next to him and a guy who is like passing out right next to him,” Mouli said.

Stan and Mary Ann Greene were browsing in a Columbia sportswear store when the shooting started.

“We had just gotten in, just a couple minutes earlier, and we just heard a lot of loud popping,” Mary Ann Greene told The Associated Press.

Employees rolled down the security gate and brought everyone to the rear of the store until police arrived and escorted them out, the Greenes said.

Eber Romero was at an Under Armour store when a cashier mentioned there was a shooting.

As he left, the mall appeared empty and all the shops had their security gates down, Romero said. That is when he started seeing broken glass and victims of the shooting on the floor of the shopping center.

___

Associated Press writers Gene Johnson in Seattle and Adam Kealoha Causey in Dallas contributed to this report.

On a 1-acre plot of land bought with a small down payment, Garcia built a home in the Trails End neighborhood that provided nurturing shelter for his family. It was also an inviting space for friends to visit. The lush green space around his home, located about 60 miles north of Houston, reminded Garcia of the countryside of his native Honduras.

“Back home in Honduras, he was a country man … He talked about how beautiful the country is,” said Johnny Ray Gibbs, who has known Garcia for a decade. “I asked him, ’How is it up there (in Cleveland)? He said, ‘Beautiful.’”

That beauty was shattered by gunfire on April 28 when authorities say a neighbor, Francisco Oropesa, responded to a request to stop firing his AR-style rifle late at night by charging into Garcia’s home and killing five people.

The shooting victims included Garcia’s wife, Sonia Argentina Guzman; and 9-year-old son, Daniel Enrique Laso; family friends Diana Velásquez Alvarado, 21; Jose Jonathan Cacerez, 18, and Cacerez’s girlfriend, Obdulia Julisa Molina Rivera, 29. All were from Honduras.

As the victims were remembered for their efforts to seek better lives in the U.S. or for their bravery in saving children during the shooting, Garcia and his neighbors were uncertain if they and the community they’ve worked hard to build would ever recover.

“I don’t have words to describe what happened. It’s like I am alive but at the same time not. What happened was something horrible, ugly,” Garcia told reporters following the shooting.

The alleged gunman, 38, was captured after a four-day search and jailed on five murder charges.

Weeks before the shooting, Garcia, who works as an electrician, and Guzman had celebrated the birth of their son. He joined Daniel and a 2½ year old sister in their burgeoning family. Also living in the home was Wilson Garcia’s brother-in-law, Ramiro Guzman, and his wife and 6-month-old son.

The others in the home during the shooting were extended family and friends who would often stay on weekends, Garcia said.

Shawn Crawford, 52, who lives two houses down, said Garcia and his family “were just good people.” Crawford and her grandchildren had attended kids birthday parties and cookouts at Garcia’s home.

Guzman’s brother, Germán Guzmán, 28, said his sister came to the U.S. nine years ago so she could help her family.

“Here in Honduras, there’s no work,” he told The Associated Press from the central Honduras town of La Misión.

Crawford said when Guzman was pregnant last year, Garcia went to Crawford’s home and asked if he could buy a pink flower growing from her Yucca plant, saying it was “good for the unborn baby.” Crawford told him to take one anytime he saw it bloom.

“That’s the neighborhood we were … Everybody just helped each other,” Crawford said.

That help among neighbors was valuable because Trails End was not always an easy place to live.

Residents have been forced to collect money to fix the potholes that riddle the streets because they’re considered private roads and not under the county’s jurisdiction.

The killings highlighted the ongoing problem of residents firing their weapons for fun and slow law enforcement response times to such incidents. Garcia had asked Oropeza if he could fire his weapon farther away because Garcia’s 1½ month old son was trying to sleep.

Dale Tiller, who has lived in the neighborhood for 13 years, said despite these difficult circumstances, people live there because of the “pride in wanting to be a homeowner and live a better life.”

Just a week before the shooting, Garcia had finished converting a carport into another room for his home of three years. The building supplies he had used were still in his front yard days after the shooting.

“Besides the issues we do have, there are really good people here,” Tiller said.

Idalmy Hernandez, 45, said she and the other immigrants in Trails End have fought for the dream of home ownership. When she spoke to Garcia after the shooting, he told her he felt his dream had ended.

“He is very sad,” said Hernandez, who is from Honduras.

At a vigil in front of Garcia’s home, 10-year-old Guillermo Tobon recalled how he would often play soccer with Garcia’s son, Daniel, as they waited for the morning school bus. Soccer was Daniel’s favorite sport. The last time they played was a day before his death.

“We played about 30 minutes until the bus arrived,” Tobon said.

Among the flowers and stuffed animals placed at a memorial in front of Garcia’s home was a letter addressed to Daniel: “You were the best friend ever. You were so good at golie in soccer. You were the best teamate. You will always be in our hearts.”

“It’s very hard because nothing like this has ever happened,” said Manuela Lara, who would often see Garcia and his family at the neighborhood Mexican food stand that Lara owns.

Velásquez Alvarado’s father, Osmán Velásquez, said his daughter had traveled to the United States eight years ago without documents but had recently received U.S. residency status.

Jeffrison Rivera, Velásquez Alvarado’s husband, said in a video posted on immigration activist Carlos Eduardo Espina’s Facebook page that Jonathan Cacerez was his nephew and had been like a father to Molina Rivera’s two children. Rivera said Molina Rivera had only arrived in the last year.

Rivera said his two sons — one 9 months old and the other 6 years old — were among the five children that Velásquez Alvarado and Molina Rivera protected in a closet by hiding them under a pile of clothes.

Oropeza “took my heart. He left my two kids with no mother,” Rivera said.

While the remains of four of the victims will be repatriated to Honduras, Velásquez Alvarado will be buried in the U.S.

Crawford said she thinks the shooting along with comments from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, in which he described the five victims as “illegal immigrants,” have residents in her neighborhood scared. She’s not sure if things will go back to normal, when neighbors were outside barbecuing, walking around with their families.

“I hope it does because that was the nice part of the neighborhood,” Crawford said.

___

Associated Press reporter Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, contributed to this report.

___

A shooter killed at least eight people and wounded 13 in a drive-by attack near a town close to Belgrade late Thursday, the second such mass killing in Serbia in two days, state television reported.

The attacker shot randomly at people near the town of Mladenovac, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the capital, the RTS report said early Friday. Police were looking for a 21-year-old suspect who fled after the attack, the report said.

The shooting came a day after a 13-year-old boy used his father’s guns in a rampage at a school in Belgrade that killed eight of his fellow students and a school guard.

The bloodshed sent shockwaves through a Balkan nation unused to mass murders.

Though Serbia is awash with weapons left over from the wars of the 1990s, mass shootings are extremely rare. Wednesday’s school shooting was the first in the country’s modern history. The last mass shooting before this week was in 2013, when a war veteran killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.

Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic called Thursday’s shooting “a terrorist act,” state media reported.

Hundreds of special police and helicopter units, as well as ambulances, were sent to the area, which has been sealed off as police search for the attacker.

No other details were immediately available, and police had not issued any statements.

Earlier Thursday, Serbian students, many wearing black and carrying flowers, filled streets around the school in central Belgrade as they paid silent homage to peers killed a day earlier. Thousands lined up to lay flowers, light candles and leave toys to commemorate the nine people who were killed on Wednesday morning.

The tragedy also sparked a debate about the general state of the nation following decades of crises and conflicts whose aftermath have created a state of permanent insecurity and instability, along with deep political divisions.

Authorities on Thursday moved to boost gun control, as police urged citizens to lock up their guns and keep them away from children.

Police have said that the teen used his father’s guns to carry out the attack. He had planned it for a month, drawing sketches of classrooms and making lists of the children he planned to kill, police said on Wednesday.

The boy, who had visited shooting ranges with his father and apparently had the code to his father’s safe, took two guns from the safe where they were stored together with bullets, police said on Wednesday.

The shooting on Wednesday morning in Vladislav Ribnikar primary school also left seven people hospitalized — six children and a teacher. One girl who was shot in the head remains in a life-threatening condition, and a boy is in serious condition with spinal injuries, doctors said on Thursday morning.

To help people deal with the tragedy, authorities announced they were setting up a helpline. Hundreds answered a call to donate blood for the wounded victims. A three-day mourning period will begin Friday morning.

Serbian teachers’ unions announced protests and strikes to warn about a crisis in the school system and demand changes. Authorities shrugged off responsibility, with some officials blaming Western influence.

The shooter, whom the police identified as Kosta Kecmanovic, has not given any motive for his actions.

Upon entering his school, Kecmanovic first killed the guard and three students in the hallway. He then went to the history classroom where he shot a teacher before turning his gun on the students.

Kecmanovic then unloaded the gun in the school yard and called the police himself, although they had already received an alert from a school official. When he called, Kecmanovic told duty officers he was a “psychopath who needs to calm down,” police said.

The children killed Wednesday were seven girls and one boy. One of the girls was a French citizen, France’s foreign ministry said.

Authorities have said that Kecmanovic is too young to be charged and tried. He has been placed in a mental institution, while his father has been detained on suspicion of endangering public security because his son got hold of the guns.

“I think we are all guilty. I think each one of us has some responsibility, that we allowed some things we should not allow,” said Zoran Sefik, a Belgrade resident, during Wednesday evening’s vigil near the school.

Jovan Lazovic, another Belgrade resident, said he was not surprised: “It was a matter of days when something like this could happen, having in mind what is happening in the world and here,” he said.

Gun culture is widespread in Serbia and elsewhere in the Balkans: The region has among the highest numbers of guns per capita in Europe. Guns are often fired into the air at celebrations and the cult of the warrior is part of national identities.

Experts have repeatedly warned of the danger posed by the number of weapons in a highly divided country like Serbia, where convicted war criminals are glorified and violence against minority groups often goes unpunished. They also note that decades of instability stemming from the conflicts of the 1990s, as well as ongoing economic hardship, could trigger such outbursts.

“We have had too much violence for too long,” psychologist Zarko Trebjesanin told N1 television. “Children copy models. We need to eliminate negative models … and create a different system of values.”

Francisco Oropeza showered and slept at the house outside the city of Conroe on Tuesday while Divimara Lamar Nava got him donuts from a nearby store, a prosecutor said. Lamar Nava also acknowledged delivering a message from Oropeza to his cousins in the area asking them to help him get out of the country, the prosecutor said at Lamar Nava’s probable cause hearing. The cousins refused to help.

Authorities believe Lamar Nava was talking to investigators at the same time she was trying to help Oropeza, San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said at a news conference. She initially told authorities she didn’t know where Oropeza was, but later told a federal agent that he showed up at the house about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to the prosecutor at the probable cause hearing.

Oropeza, 38, was arrested there on Tuesday evening, just 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the city of Cleveland, where the shootings took place. Acting on a tip, authorities found him hiding under a pile of laundry in a closet after a four-day manhunt. Lamar Nava, 53, was arrested at the house on Wednesday.

Authorities identified Lamar Nava as Oropeza’s wife, though jail records list her as not being married but sharing a home address with him.

The slayings Friday sent shudders through a nation already dealing with a wave of shootings that have put the U.S. on a torrid pace for mass killings this year.

news May 2, 2023

Suspect in Massacre of 5 Neighbors in Texas Allegedly Beat His Wife Last Year, Prosecutor Says

Gun Violence May 1, 2023

Man Who Lost Wife and Son in Texas Mass Shooting Tells His Story

Outside the Conroe-area home, yellow police tape could be seen Wednesday in both the front and back, although the officers were gone. Neighbor Angel Lozano recalled looking up from unloading tools from his truck Tuesday night to see unmarked law enforcement vehicles streaming onto his normally quiet street.

“A bunch of people got out with guns and they went straight to the house and surrounded the area,” Lozano, 39, said Wednesday, estimating that at least 50 officers surrounded the home two doors down from his. “It was a really fast job they did. They got him without people getting hurt or another shooting.”

Several others have also been arrested, authorities said, although they only shared details about one of them. Domingo Castilla, a friend of Oropeza, was arrested on Tuesday in the Trail’s End neighborhood where the victims were shot, Dillon said. Castilla was charged with marijuana possession but authorities also expect to charge him with obstructing Oropeza’s apprehension, Dillon said.

At a news conference Wednesday, San Jacinto County Chief Deputy Sheriff Tim Kean said he couldn’t go into details about the other people who were arrested, including how many.

Oropeza was charged Wednesday with five counts of first-degree murder during a court hearing in jail, said San Jacinto County Justice of the Peace Judge Randy Ellisor. Bond is set at $1.5 million per count, for a total of $7.5 million, Ellisor said. Lamar Nava is being held at the Montgomery County jail on a felony charge of hindering the apprehension or prosecution of a known felon. Her bail has been set at $250,000. Bond for Castilla was set at $5,000, Ellisor said.

Oropeza is a Mexican national who has been deported four times between 2009 and 2016, according to U.S. immigration officials.

Police had previously spotted him on Monday afternoon in Montgomery County, prompting several schools to lock down, Kean said at a news conference outside the county jail Wednesday.

“We did confirm that was him on foot, running, but we lost track of him,” Kean said.

Kean declined to comment on the tip that led authorities to the Conroe home, which he said was one that had not been previously checked by authorities.

Texas May 3, 2023

Manhunt Ends With Arrest of Man Accused of Killing 5 Neighbors in Cleveland, TX: What to Know

The arrest came after authorities set up a widening dragnet of more than 250 people, drones and search dogs from multiple jurisdictions and offered $80,000 in reward money. The tip that finally ended the chase came at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday. A little more than an hour later, Oropeza was in custody, said FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul.

Lozano said he hadn’t known the residents of the home where Oropeza was arrested but would sometimes say hi to them if they were walking by his house. “We never thought he was going to be right next door,” he said.

The victims have been identified as Diana Velásquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9, all from Honduras. Velásquez Alvarado’s father, Osmán Velásquez, said she had recently obtained legal residency in the U.S.

Argentina Guzman’s husband, Wilson Garcia, survived the shooting. He said friends and family in the home tried to hide and shield the children after Oropeza walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.

When offering a reward for Oropeza’s capture, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the victims “illegal immigrants,” which drew widespread backlash. His office apologized on Monday.

A government official in Honduras said the remains of four of the victims would be repatriated. Velásquez Alvarado will be buried in the United States at the request of her sister and her husband, said Wilson Paz, general director of Honduras’ migrant protection service.

Osmán Velásquez said his daughter had traveled to the United States without documents eight years ago with the help of a sister who was already living there.

“Her sister convinced me to let her take my daughter. She told me the United States is a country of opportunities and that’s true,” he said. “But I never imagined it was just for this.”

Deion Patterson was awaiting his first court appearance Thursday after police say he opened fire in the waiting room of an Atlanta medical practice Wednesday. Workers and others in a bustling commercial district took shelter for hours during the manhunt.

Authorities swarmed the city’s midtown neighborhood shortly after noon in search of the shooter. Patterson, 24, was captured in Cobb County, just northwest of Atlanta.

Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Charles Hampton Jr. declined to discuss any details of the investigation or a possible motive, saying, “Why he did what he did, all of that is still under investigation.”

Patterson had an appointment at a Northside Medical building and opened fire shortly after arriving in an attack that lasted about two minutes, law enforcement officials said at a news conference Wednesday night. Patterson then went to a Shell gas station and took a pickup truck that had been left running and unattended, authorities said.

A 39-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said.

The Fulton County medical examiner’s office identified her as Amy St. Pierre. St. Pierre worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency confirmed.

The CDC “is deeply saddened by the unexpected loss of a colleague killed today in the Midtown Atlanta shooting,” spokesperson Benjamin Haynes said in a statement. “Our hearts are with her family, friends, and colleagues as they remember her and grieve this tragic loss.”

The four wounded women — aged 25, 39, 56 and 71 — remained in critical but stable condition Wednesday night, according to Hampton, the deputy chief. Their names were not immediately released.

Authorities had swarmed the city’s bustling midtown neighborhood shortly after noon in search of the suspect, who fled after the shooting. Police said in a statement that the gunman, who they identified as 24-year-old Deion Patterson, was captured in Cobb County, just northwest of Atlanta.

Authorities said Patterson shot five women on the 11th floor of a Northside Medical building, which is in a commercial area filled with office towers and high-rise apartments. News of the shooting prompted workers and lunchgoers to shelter in place for hours.

Patterson had an appointment at the medical practice and shortly after arriving shot the first victim, law enforcement officials said at a news conference Wednesday night. The shooting lasted approximately two minutes before Patterson left the building and went to a Shell gas station and took a pickup truck that had been left running and unattended, authorities said.

Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said a 39-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting. The Fulton County medical examiner’s office identified her as Amy St. Pierre.

The four wounded victims were also women, aged 25, 39, 56 and 71. Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Charles Hampton Jr. said they remained in critical but stable condition Wednesday night. Their names were not immediately released.

Hampton declined to discuss any details of the investigation or possible motive, saying, “Why he did what he did, all of that is still under investigation.”

Patterson’s mother, Minyone Patterson, who police said had accompanied her son to the medical office, told The Associated Press by phone that her son, a former Coast Guardsman, had “some mental instability going on” from medication he received from the Veterans Affairs health system that he began taking on Friday.

She said her son had wanted Ativan to deal with anxiety and depression but that the VA wouldn’t give it to him because they said it would be “too addicting.” She’s a nurse and said she told them he would only have taken the proper dosage “because he listened to me in every way.”

“Those families, those families,” she said, starting to sob. “They’re hurting because they wouldn’t give my son his damn Ativan. Those families lost their loved ones because he had a mental break because they wouldn’t listen to me.”

She ended the call without saying what medication her son had been taking.

“We are horrified and saddened to hear of the active shooter situation in Atlanta today,” Veterans Affairs Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said in an emailed statement. “Due to patient privacy, we cannot discuss the Veteran’s personal information without written consent.”

In a statement, the U.S. Coast Guard said Patterson had joined the service in 2018 and was discharged from active duty in January. He was an electrician’s mate second class at the time.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens applauded the fact that Patterson was arrested and taken into custody alive so he can be prosecuted.

“Right now, we’ve had a successful end to a traumatic day,” Dickens said, while also advocating for tougher gun laws and stressing the importance of police training.

“I hope the city, the region, rests easy that he is in custody, but I also hope that we will stay vigilant to continue to look at a future where individuals who shouldn’t have a gun in possession won’t have one, and also that individuals are brought to justice, and also that we deal with these things that are mental health or easy access to guns,” Dickens said.

Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement that he was “heartbroken” by the shooting and praying for victims, going on to praise law enforcement, saying officers “demonstrated yet again their professionalism, courage and unwavering dedication.”

Cobb County Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer said technology played a huge role in finding the suspected shooter, saying even as recently as four years ago they may not have been able to find him so quickly. He said the department had acquired some technology tools and those along with the Department of Transportation’s cameras and community members calling with information, led to the arrest.

“Those tools are really what got us the clues that we we needed to make this successful — and the people getting those clues,” VanHoozer said.

The pickup truck was found in a parking garage near the Battery, a mixed-use development that is next to the stadium where the Atlanta Braves play. Video aired by WSB-TV showed Patterson was arrested near a tennis court and swimming pool in a wooded condominium complex about a half-mile (less than a kilometer) to the north.

Around the time of the shooting, Cassidy Hale, a medical device representative, said she was driving to the facility to check on a machine in the building’s 12th floor outpatient surgery center.

Hale saw firetrucks but didn’t realize anything was wrong until after she parked and found the elevator wasn’t working. Hale said she called the operating room manager, who told her there was an active shooter and she should go back to her car.

Hale said police kept her from leaving the parking garage and later checked each car and escorted her out to be interviewed.

She gathered with other employees and patients in a building across the street, where she said “everyone was really in shock” and “trying to process what was going on.”

The shooting comes as cities around the U.S. have been wracked by gun violence and mass shootings in 2023.

Shortly after the shooting, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia took to the Senate floor to decry gun violence and to urge his colleagues to advance gun reform.

“There have been so many mass shootings … that, tragically, we act as if this is routine,” the Democrat said during a 12-minute speech. “We behave as if this is normal. It is not normal.”

The Atlanta pastor added: “I shudder to say it, but the truth is, in a real sense, it’s only a matter of time that this kind of tragedy comes knocking on your door.”

Georgia’s other U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, also a Democrat, echoed his colleague in a statement: “The level of gun violence in America today is unconscionable and unacceptable, and policymakers at all levels have a responsibility to ensure public safety and implement long-overdue reforms.”

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Authorities said Deion Patterson, 24, stole a car and fled after shooting five women on the 11th floor of a Northside medical building shortly after noon. The facility is in a commercial area filled with office towers and high-rise apartments and news of the shooting prompted workers and lunchgoers to shelter in place for hours.

“We believe (Patterson) carjacked a vehicle a short distance away and was able to flee the scene as the law enforcement agencies were descending on this area,” Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said during a news conference.

Police said in a statement that Patterson was captured Wednesday evening after remaining hours on the run. Authorities did not immediately release additional information about where Patterson was found.

Schierbaum said a 39-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting. The four injured victims were also women, aged 25, 39, 56 and 71.

In a statement to NBC, Grady Hospital said three of the four injured had to undergo surgery and were then placed in intensive care. The fourth victim remained in stable condition in the trauma center.

Patterson’s mother, Minyone Patterson, told The Associated Press by phone that her son, a former Coast Guardsman, had “some mental instability going on” from medication he received from the Veterans Affairs health system that he began taking on Friday.

She said her son had wanted Ativan to deal with anxiety and depression but that the VA wouldn’t give it to him because they said it would be “too addicting.” She’s a nurse and said she told them he would only have taken the proper dosage “because he listened to me in every way.”

“Those families, those families,” she said, starting to sob. “They’re hurting because they wouldn’t give my son his damn Ativan. Those families lost their loved ones because he had a mental break because they wouldn’t listen to me.”

She ended the call without saying what medication her son had been taking.

After getting information that the shooter may have entered Cobb County, investigators checked surveillance and traffic cameras, and found that the vehicle that appeared to be the one he was driving had entered Cobb County around 12:30 p.m., Cobb County police Sgt. Wayne Delk said. That discovery set off a massive search in the county just northwest of Atlanta, but there had not been a confirmed sighting on camera or by any eyewitness since then, Delk said.

Delk said Atlanta police recovered the vehicle in a parking garage near the Battery, a mixed-use development which is next to the stadium where the Atlanta Braves play.

Schierbaum added that Patterson’s family is “being cooperative” with investigators.

In a statement, the U.S. Coast Guard said Patterson had joined the service in 2018 and was discharged from active duty in January. He was an electrician’s mate second class at the time.

Crime Stoppers was offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the suspect.

Around the time of the shooting, Cassidy Hale, a medical device representative, said she was driving to the facility to check on a machine in the building’s 12th floor outpatient surgery center.

Hale saw firetrucks but didn't realize anything was wrong until after she parked and found the elevator wasn’t working. Hale said she called the operating room manager, who told her there was an active shooter and she should go back to her car.

Hale said police kept her from leaving the parking garage and later checked each car and escorted her out to be interviewed.

She then gathered with other employees and patients in a building across the street, where she said “everyone was really in shock” and “trying to process what was going on.”

The shooting comes as cities around the U.S. have been wracked by gun violence and mass shootings in 2023.

Shortly after the shooting, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia took to the Senate floor to decry gun violence and to urge his colleagues to advance gun reform.

“There have been so many mass shootings ... that, tragically, we act as if this is routine,” the Democrat said during a 12-minute speech. "We behave as if this is normal. It is not normal."

The Atlanta pastor added: “I shudder to say it, but the truth is, in a real sense, it's only a matter of time that this kind of tragedy comes knocking on your door.”

Georgia's other U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, also a Democrat, echoed his colleague in a statement issued Wednesday evening: “The level of gun violence in America today is unconscionable and unacceptable, and policymakers at all levels have a responsibility to ensure public safety and implement long-overdue reforms."

The shooting comes as cities around the U.S. have been wracked by gun violence and mass shootings in 2023.

Shortly after the shooting, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia took to the Senate floor to decry gun violence and to urge his colleagues to advance gun reform.

“There have been so many mass shootings ... that, tragically, we act as if this is routine,” Warnock said during a 12-minute speech. "We behave as if this is normal. It is not normal."

The Atlanta pastor added: “I shudder to say it, but the truth is, in a real sense, it's only a matter of time that this kind of tragedy comes knocking on your door.”

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

The hunt for 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza began Friday after he fled from the scene of the deadly shooting in the rural town of Cleveland, about 45 miles north of Houston.

The shooting happened after Oropeza’s neighbors asked him to stop firing off rounds in his yard because a baby was trying to sleep. The baby’s mother and 9-year-old brother were among the five people killed, who were all originally from Honduras.

Here are some things to know about the case:

WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE MANHUNT?

An FBI agent acknowledged Monday that authorities had little to go on in the widening search for Oropeza.

More than 250 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies, including the U.S. Marshals, took part in the manhunt, which had come up empty despite additional manpower, scent-tracking dogs, drones and $80,000 in reward money being offered.

On Monday, a heavy presence of police converged in Montgomery County after a possible sighting, but the sheriff’s office later said Oropeza wasn’t among the people who were questioned.

Montgomery County Sheriff Rand Henderson confirmed Tuesday that Oropeza was arrested without incident near Conroe, roughly 20 miles (32.19 kilometers) from the home where the shooting happened.

WHO IS OROPEZA?

Oropeza is a Mexican national who has been deported four times, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Oropeza was deported in March 2009, September of that same year, January of 2012 and most recently in July 2016.

The FBI in Houston tweeted Sunday that it was referring to the suspect as Oropesa, not Oropeza, to “better reflect his identity in law enforcement systems.” His family lists their name as Oropeza on a sign outside their yard, as well as in public records.

WHAT HAPPENED THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING?

Neighbors frequently fire guns in the rural community to unwind. But Wilson Garcia said his baby was struggling to sleep through it, so he and two other people asked Oropeza to move his shooting farther away from their home.

After Oropeza rejected the request, the family repeatedly called law enforcement, Garcia recalled Sunday.

He said while waiting for help to arrive, Oropeza ran toward him and reloaded. Garcia’s house was packed with 15 people, several of them friends who had been there to join Garcia’s wife on a church retreat.

Garcia’s 25-year-old wife, Sonia Argentina Guzman, and 9-year-old son, Daniel Enrique Laso, were killed, along with Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; and Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18. Two of the victims were shot while shielding Garcia’s baby and 2-year-old daughter.

WHAT ARE THE ISSUES WITH IMMIGRATION?

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has faced criticism for drawing attention to the victims’ immigration status.

Abbott offered a $50,000 reward over the weekend for any tips that might lead to the gunman’s arrest, and while doing so, he described the victims as “illegal immigrants” — a potentially false statement that his office walked back and apologized for on Monday.

Critics accused Abbott, who has made immigration reform a signature issue in Texas, of injecting politics into the tragic shooting.

“We’ve since learned that at least one of the victims may have been in the United States legally,” Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement. “We regret if the information was incorrect and detracted from the important goal of finding and arresting the criminal.”

Eze said information provided by federal officials after the shooting indicated that the suspect and victims were in the country illegally. Her statement did not address why Abbott mentioned their status and she did not immediately respond to questions about the criticism.

Francisco Oropesa, 38, fled after the shooting Friday night that left five people dead, including an 8-year-old boy. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said Saturday evening that authorities had widened the search to as far as 20 miles from the scene of the shooting.

Investigators found clothes and a phone while combing a rural area that includes dense layers of forest, but tracking dogs lost the scent, Capers said.

Police recovered the AR-15-style rifle that Oropesa allegedly used in the shootings but authorities were not sure if he was carrying another weapon, the sheriff said.

“He could be anywhere now,” Capers said.

The reward was announced at a press conference Sunday afternoon when authorities continued to say they had no tips about Oropesa’s whereabouts.

“We’re asking everyone for your help until we can bring this suspect, or this monster I will call him, to justice,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge James Smith. 

“Right now we’re running into dead ends,” he said.

The attack happened near the town of Cleveland, north of Houston, on a street where some residents say neighbors often unwind by firing off guns.

Capers said the victims were between the ages of 8 and 31 years old and that all were believed to be from Honduras. All were shot “from the neck up,” he said.

Two hundred officers were going door to door in the search for Oropesa, asking questions and looking for tips, Capers said.

“This $80,000 is in my opinion a real good motivator to have somebody turn him in,” he said.

Billboard posters are being made with information about the reward in Spanish, he said.

The attack was the latest act of gun violence in what has been a record pace of mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year, some of which have also involved semiautomatic rifles.

The mass killings have played out in a variety of places — a Nashville school, a Kentucky bank, a Southern California dance hall, and now a rural Texas neighborhood inside a single-story home.

Capers said there were 10 people in the house — some of whom had just moved there earlier in the week — but that that no one else was injured. He said two of the victims were found in a bedroom laying over two children in an apparent attempt to shield them.

A total of three children found covered in blood in the home were taken to a hospital but found to be uninjured, Capers said.

“They were covered in blood from the same ladies that were laying on top of them trying to protect them,” he said Sunday.

Capers said the children were safe with family.

FBI spokesperson Christina Garza said investigators do not believe everyone at the home were members of a single family. The victims were identified as Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 8.

The confrontation followed the neighbors walking up to the fence and asking the suspect to stop shooting rounds, Capers said. The suspect responded by telling them that it was his property, Capers said, and one person in the house got a video of the suspect walking up to the front door with the rifle.

The shooting took place on a rural pothole-riddled street where single-story homes sit on wide 1-acre lots and are surrounded by a thick canopy of trees. A horse could be seen behind the victim’s home, while in the front yard of Oropeza’s house a dog and chickens wandered.

Rene Arevalo Sr., who lives a few houses down, said he heard gunshots around midnight but didn’t think anything of it.

“It’s a normal thing people do around here, especially on Fridays after work,” Arevalo said. “They get home and start drinking in their backyards and shooting out there.”

Capers said his deputies had been to Oropesa’s home at least once before and spoken with him about “shooting his gun in the yard.” It was not clear whether any action was taken at the time. At a news conference Saturday evening, the sheriff said firing a gun on your own property can be illegal, but he did not say whether Oropesa had previously broken the law.

Capers said the new arrivals in the home had moved from Houston earlier in the week, but he said he did not know whether they were planning to stay there.

Across the U.S. since Jan. 1, there have been at least 18 shootings that left four or more people dead, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today, in partnership with Northeastern University. The violence is sparked by a range of motives: murder-suicides and domestic violence; gang retaliation; school shootings; and workplace vendettas.

Texas has confronted multiple mass shootings in recent years, including last year’s attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde; a racist attack at an El Paso Walmart in 2019; and a gunman opening fire at a church in the tiny town of Sutherland Springs in 2017.

Republican leaders in Texas have continually rejected calls for new firearm restrictions, including this year over the protests of several families whose children were killed in Uvalde.

A few months ago, Arevalo said Oropesa threatened to kill his dog after it got loose in the neighborhood and chased the pit bull in his truck.

“I tell my wife all the time, ‘Stay away from the neighbors. Don’t argue with them. You never know how they’re going to react,’” Arevalo said. “I tell her that because Texas is a state where you don’t know who has a gun and who is going to react that way.”

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As obituaries were posted online, more details surfaced about the lives of the employees killed Monday at Old National Bank. They have been identified as senior vice presidents Tommy Elliott, 63, and Joshua Barrick, 40; executive administrative officer Deana Eckert, 57; loan analyst Juliana Farmer, 45; and commercial real estate market executive Jim Tutt Jr., 64.

According to Elliott’s obituary, a funeral service is set for 3 p.m. Friday at Broadway Baptist Church in Louisville, followed by a private burial. The same day, Eckert’s visitation will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. followed by a funeral service at Northside Christian Church in New Albany, Indiana, just over the Kentucky border from Louisville, according to her obituary.

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Barrick’s visitation will be held from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday at Ratterman Funeral Home, and a funeral Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, both in Louisville, according to his obituary.

Tutt’s obituary says a visitation will be held from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Sunday followed by a funeral service at Southeast Christian Church Chapel in the Woods in Louisville.

Funeral arrangements for Farmer were pending.

Tutt and Elliott each had careers in the banking industry spanning four decades. Tutt was an enthusiastic winemaker, sailor and Kentucky Wildcats fan. He led annual humanitarian and church missions for over a decade to the Dominican Republic, according to his obituary.

Elliott was prominent in Democratic politics and was a close friend of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. His obituary says Elliott was a past chairman of Baptist Health Louisville and served on numerous boards, among them Goodwill Industries of Kentucky, Little Sisters of the Poor, Kentucky Educational Television and the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft in Louisville.

Eckert, a mother of two, would annually put together a large food spread in the bank’s conference room for the celebration of Thunder Over Louisville, the fireworks kickoff event before the Kentucky Derby, said Kevin Luoma, a former bank co-worker.

Barrick coached basketball at his church’s grade school, and his other passions included “Sunday breakfast with his kids, any day on the golf course, and Xavier basketball,” his obituary said.

Farmer had just moved to Louisville from Henderson, Kentucky. She had four grandchildren and posted Sunday on Facebook that another one was on the way.

“I need your help. He’s never hurt anyone, he’s a good kid,” said the woman, who identified herself as the gunman’s mother. It turned out that at the time of her call, the gunman was already at the bank. The emergency dispatcher informed the woman that other calls were coming in about the shooting.

None of the callers are identified by name and other information is edited out of the calls, but the first call that came in was from a woman who was on a video call inside the bank. She screams and cries throughout the four-minute call and says there is an active shooter at the downtown branch of the bank.

“I just watched it on a Teams meeting,” she says. “We were having a board meeting. With our commercial (lending) team.”

“We heard multiple shots and everybody started saying, ’Oh my God and then he came into the board room.”

Bank employee Connor Sturgeon, 25, used an AR-15 assault-style rifle in the attack Monday at Old National Bank, where he killed five coworkers while livestreaming before police fatally shot him. Eight others were injured, including a police officer who was shot in the head and remains hospitalized in critical condition.

After the first call, others began streaming in. One of the callers says she’s calling from within the building as numerous gunshots are heard in the background.

“I’m in a closet hiding,” the caller says. She says people have been shot and gives a description of the shooting, saying she knows the shooter. “He works with us.”

“How long will it be before they get here?” she whispers and the dispatcher tells her that authorities are on the way and advises her to keep quiet.

Asked what kind of injuries there were, the caller replies: “I don’t know. I just saw a lot of blood.”

Another call came from a man inside the bank, who told dispatchers the address and said, “We have an active shooting in our building. White male. He’s an employee of Old National Bank. Get here now. We need somebody now.”

Another call came from a motorist driving down Main Street, who reported seeing a man about five minutes prior with an assault rifle and a bulletproof vest walking around. The caller asks if anyone else has reported the man.

The dispatcher then describes what others reported the suspect was wearing and the caller confirms it.

The woman identifying herself as Sturgeon’s mother asks during the call if she can go to the bank but is told by the dispatcher that she should not because “there’s a situation going on down there” and “it’s dangerous.”

“You’ve had calls from other people, so he’s already there?” the mother asks with shock in her voice.

Wednesday’s release included a half-hour of emergency responder radio traffic.

The release came hours before hundreds of people gathered at the Muhammad Ali Center in downtown Louisville Wednesday evening to remember the victims and allow the public to offer prayers for the injured. The center has an outdoor auditorium just a mile from the site of Monday’s shooting. Louisville mayor Craig Greenberg was among the speakers.

The mood at the vigil was somber, but there were cheers for the officers who responded to Monday’s shooting. Many attendees were dressed in business clothes, and some had walked to the memorial after their workday in downtown Louisville.

That same night, a moment of silence preceded a college baseball game between Louisville and neighboring Bellarmine University at Jim Patterson Stadium. Players from both schools stood in alternating patterns along the first- and third-base lines as the names and pictures of the victims were displayed on an outfield video screen.

On Tuesday, police released body camera video that showed the chaotic moments when officers arrived at the bank.

Sturgeon’s parents said in a statement that their son had mental health challenges that were being addressed, but “there were never any warning signs or indications he was capable of this shocking act.”

They said they are mourning for the victims and the loss of their son, and working with police to understand what happened.

The shooting, the 15th mass killing in the country this year, comes just two weeks after a former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) south of Louisville.

The five bank employees killed in the shooting were Joshua Barrick, 40, a senior vice president; Deana Eckert, 57, an executive administrative officer; Tommy Elliott, 63, also a senior vice president; Juliana Farmer, 45, a loan analyst; and Jim Tutt Jr., 64, a commercial real estate market executive.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has said Elliott was one of his closest friends.

“I’ll admit that while I am not angry, I am empty. And I’m sad,” Beshear said at the vigil, his voice breaking. “And I just keep thinking that maybe we’ll wake up. What I know is, I just wish I’d taken an extra moment, made an extra call, tell him how much I care about him. And I know we are all feeling the same. But I also know they hear us now. And that they feel our love.”

Later, speaker Whitney Austin said she was shot 12 times in a September 2018 mass shooting at a Cincinnati bank and that “Monday morning was heartbreakingly familiar to me.”

Just as she was wrapped in love by her community since then, Austin asked those at the vigil to do the same for the families involved in Monday’s shooting.

“Please don’t forget about them next week. Don’t forget about them next month. And don’t forget about them next year,” Austin said. “They are going to need your support for the rest of their lives.”

The videos, taken from two wounded officers’ lapels, offer a rare perspective of police officers responding to a massacre that killed five and injured eight others Monday. One, a rookie officer, was shot in the head within minutes of arriving at the scene, as his partner was grazed by a bullet and sought cover while still trying to take down the shooter.

Louisville Metro Police Department Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey walked reporters through edited footage and still photos at a new conference Tuesday and praised the responding officers for their heroism.

They received the call of a shooting at Old National Bank at 8:38 a.m., and the two officers arrived three minutes later, according to a chronology provided by police. They hadn’t even gotten out of the patrol car when the gunman began firing on them.

“Back up, back up, back up,” one officer shouted as gunshots thundered in the background.

One still image from surveillance video showed the 25-year-old shooter, who worked at the bank, holding a rifle, wearing jeans, a blue button-down shirt and sneakers, surrounded by broken glass inside the building. He had already shot numerous people inside, and police said he set up an ambush position to attack officers as they arrived.

The front doors were glass, elevated from the sidewalk, and because of the reflection, the officers could not see the shooter inside, Humphrey said. But he could see them.

Officer Cory Galloway retrieved a rifle from the trunk of the patrol car.

“Cover for me,” he said, and they reported to dispatch that there had been shots fired.

Galloway was training rookie Officer Nickolas Wilt, who had graduated from the police academy just 10 days earlier. The videos showed them walking up the stairs toward the front door when the gunman fired a barrage of bullets.

Wilt was shot in the head, though that was not captured on video. Galloway was grazed in the shoulder, police said. His body camera showed that he fell and then took cover behind a concrete planter at the bottom of the staircase leading to the building. Sirens from the dozens of police cars coming toward them wailed in the background.

“The shooter has an angle on that officer,” he said in the video recording. “We need to get up there. I don’t know where he’s at, the glass is blocking him.”

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A video taken by a bystander across the street, which police also released Tuesday, showed him darting back and forth from one side of the planter to another, trying to get a shot at the gunman.

He waited, and as other officers arrived, more gunshots rang out and glass shattered.

Galloway fired toward the gunman at 8:44 a.m., three minutes after arriving.

“I think I got him down! I think he’s down!” he shouted. “Suspect down! Get the officer!”

He advanced into the building, and shards of glass crunched under his feet. The video then showed Galloway approaching the suspect, who lay on the ground inside the lobby next to a long rifle.

“I think you can see the tension in that video,” Humphrey said Tuesday. “You can understand the stress that those officers are going through. … They did absolutely exactly what they needed to do to save lives. Once officers arrived on scene, not another person was shot.”

Wilt was transported in the back of a police car to a hospital, Humphrey said. In the chaotic first minutes, police treated and triaged the victims inside. Humphrey said the ambulance service was short-staffed, so a police lieutenant drove the ambulance while emergency crews treated people at the scene.

Wilt was still in critical but stable condition Tuesday, according to University of Louisville Hospital Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jason Smith.

Two of the four wounded still in the hospital had injuries that were not life-threatening, Smith said.

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said it was crucial to release the footage because “transparency is important — even more so in a time of crisis.”

Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said at a news conference that bank employee Connor Sturgeon, 25, bought the AR-15 assault-style rifle used in the attack at a local dealership on April 4.

“We have also learned that he purchased the weapon used in this tragic incident yesterday on April 4,” she said. “He purchased the weapon legally from one of the local dealerships here in Louisville.”

Armed with the rifle, Sturgeon killed his co-workers — including a close friend of Kentucky’s governor — while livestreaming the attack.

“We do know this was targeted. He knew those individuals, of course, because he worked there,” Gwinn-Villaroel said, but didn’t give an indication of a motive behind the shooting.

Gwinn-Villaroel praised the “heroic actions” of officers who engaged the shooter without hesitation when they arrived.

“They went towards danger in order to save and preserve life,” she said. “They stopped the threat so other lives could be saved. No hesitation, and they did what they were called do to.”

The shooting, the 15th mass killing in the country this year, comes just two weeks after a former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) to the south.

In Louisville, five Old National Bank employees were killed: Joshua Barrick, 40, a senior vice president; Tommy Elliott, 63, also a senior vice president; Jim Tutt Jr., 64, a commercial real estate market executive; Juliana Farmer, 45, a loan analyst; and Deana Eckert, 57, an executive administrative officer.

The mayor urged unity as the community processes its grief, over this shooting and the many other spasms of gun violence that have stunned this city.

“We’re all feeling shaken by this, and scared and angry and a lot of other things too,” Greenberg said. “It’s important that we come together as a community to process this tragedy in particular but not just this tragedy because the reality is that we have already lost 40 people to gun violence in Louisville this year.”

Attorneys for the victims say the agreement still needs to be approved by the courts and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Jamal Alsaffar, the lead trial attorney for the victims, said he believes that will happen and will be the end of a long court battle.

“It means a small measure of closure for these families who have gone through not only the most horrific event in their life, but have also endured five years of fighting in court and fighting for the right thing, and I think this provides that measure of relief,” said Alsaffar who called the Sutherland Springs families “heroes” for having endured and won two trials against the federal government and get justice to make the system safer.

More than two dozen people were killed in November 2017 when a gunman opened fire during a Sunday service at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs. The gunman, who died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after being shot and chased by two men who heard the gunfire at the church, had served in the Air Force before the attack. In all, 26 people were killed in the shooting and another 22 were injured. Victims were churchgoers as young as five and as old as 72.

The settlement comes after U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez said in July 2021 that the U.S. Air Force was partially liable for the attack for failing to flag a 2012 conviction for domestic violence and a subsequent court martial that would have prevented the gunman from buying a weapon.

“This is a historic case and historic finding, perhaps for the first time relating to a mass shooting, that dangerous people shouldn’t get guns and when you report them to the background check system, that the background check system works,” said Alsaffar.

Rodriguez ordered the U.S. government to pay more than $230 million in damages, but the DOJ appealed the judge’s decision. The tentative agreement announced Wednesday, if approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland and if approved by the court, would resolve all claims tied to the shooting for $144.5 million.

“My clients are relieved that this is coming to a conclusion. Do we wish that the government would have agreed to pay the amount awarded in the judgment? Yes, but the nature of litigation is that appeals are filed and parties have to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of continuing to defend against the government’s appeal. Just like the government had to evaluate the decision to pursue the appeal, and people made decisions that it was in the best interest to go ahead and reach this agreement,” explained Brett Reynolds, a San Antonio attorney representing 11 of the victims.

U.S. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said the settlement not only brings the litigation to a close but also ends, “a painful chapter for the victims of this unthinkable crime.”

The plaintiffs, which include survivors of the shooting and relatives of the victims, said if information about the gunman’s criminal history had been transmitted to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) it would have prevented him from purchasing guns from a federally licensed firearms dealer.

According to court transcripts cited by NBC News, lawyers representing the U.S. government argued that even if the gunman’s information had been shared with NICS he would have found another way to get a gun and commit the shooting.

When lawsuits are filed against federal agencies or programs, they are defended by attorneys with the Justice Department, which has separate divisions for criminal prosecutions and other responsibilities.

In June 2021, the Texas Supreme Court tossed out a lawsuit against Academy Sports and Outdoors for selling the gunman the Ruger AR-556 semi-automatic rifle used in the attack, citing the U.S. Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act which protects retailers from lawsuits arising from criminal acts by third parties.

Those who survived the mass shooting are still having to live with the trauma and also continue to recover from their injuries.

“One of my clients who is the worship leader and remains the worship team leader is a paraplegic who was shot at the base of the spine and is confined to a wheelchair. Although he certainly doesn’t consider himself confined, but he has ongoing medical needs and will have them for the remainder of his life because he’s paralyzed from the waist down,” explained Reynolds. “I have another client that was shot. 12 times he underwent surgery as recently a month now ago, that still relates back to this shooting.

“The fact that it has been five years does not mean that that day ever recedes from their memory, so they do have physical and psychological needs that are continuing for which they have had no compensation yet and now we have an agreement that’s reached that certainly needs to be funded so that these people can receive the benefit of compensation that they deserve for the negligence of the Air Force,” said Reynolds.

Alsaffar said survivors need the money now to address millions of dollars worth of medical care over the past five years and many years to come.

“They need it now, some of these children whose bodies were torn apart, ripped apart by these bullets in the AR-15, they need surgeries for the rest of their life. They need help now,” said Alsaffar who said they urge the DOJ to approve the settlement soon so people can get paid as soon as possible.

Sutherland Springs, a community of about 400 people, is about 20 miles southeast of San Antonio.  

The heavily armed shooter was shot and killed by officers Monday.

The video shows the officers clearing the first story of the school when they heard gunshots coming from the second level, as previously described by police spokesperson Don Aaron during a Tuesday briefing.

Two officers from a five-member team opened fire after being engaged by the shooter, fatally shooting the suspect at 10:27 a.m., Aaron said. That was less than 15 minutes from when the first 911 call was placed.

Surveillance video also released by police showed the attacker shooting out doors to the school to gain entry.

There were no police officers present or assigned to the school at the time of the shooting because it is a church-run school.

Nashville Mar 27, 2023

What We Know So Far About the Deadly School Shooting in Nashville, Tennessee

The shooter, identified as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, was previously a student of the private Christian school. Investigators are still searching for a motive for the shooting.

A manifesto that included detailed plans for the attack has been found, Police Chief John Drake told reporters Monday afternoon.

Covenant School is a private Christian school with about 250 pre-school through sixth-grade students. The school is located in the affluent Green Hills neighborhood just south of downtown Nashville.

The three children killed were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. They were all nine years old.

The three adults killed were Cynthia Peak, age 61, Katherine Koonce, age 60, and Mike Hill, age 61.

The website of The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school founded in 2001, lists a Katherine Koonce as the head of the school. Her LinkedIn profile says she has led the school since July 2016. Peak was a substitute teacher and Hill was a custodian, according to investigators.

The attack at The Covenant School — which has about 200 students from preschool through sixth grade, as well as roughly 50 staff members — comes as communities around the nation are reeling from a spate of school violence, including the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year; a first grader who shot his teacher in Virginia; and a shooting last week in Denver that wounded two administrators.

A reeling Nashville mourned during multiple vigils Monday evening. At Belmont United Methodist Church, teary sniffling filled the background as vigil attendees sang, knelt in prayer and lit candles. They lamented the national cycle of violent and deadly shootings, at one point reciting together, “we confess we have not done enough to protect” the children injured or killed in shootings.

“We need to step back. We need to breathe. We need to grieve,” said Paul Purdue, the church’s senior pastor. “We need to remember. We need to make space for others who are grieving. We need to hear the cries of our neighbors.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The three children killed were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. They were all nine years old.

The three adults killed were Cynthia Peak, age 61, Katherine Koonce, age 60, and Mike Hill, age 61.

The website of The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school founded in 2001, lists a Katherine Koonce as the head of the school. Her LinkedIn profile says she has led the school since July 2016. Peak was a substitute teacher and Hill was a custodian, according to investigators.

A heavily-armed assailant wielding two “assault-style” rifles and a pistol killed the three students and three adults at the private Christian school in Nashville in the latest in a series of mass shootings in a country growing increasingly unnerved by bloodshed in schools.

Police said they believe the 28-year-old shooter, identified as Audrey Hale, was a former student at The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school founded in 2001. Police shot and killed the shooter, and investigators were later seen searching her Nashville-area home.

The attack at The Covenant School — which has about 200 students from preschool through sixth grade, as well as roughly 50 staff members — comes as communities around the nation are reeling from a spate of school violence, including the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year; a first grader who shot his teacher in Virginia; and a shooting last week in Denver that wounded two administrators.

“I was literally moved to tears to see this and the kids as they were being ushered out of the building,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said at an afternoon news conference.

Nashville Mar 27, 2023

Reporter Covering Nashville School Attack Reveals She Survived a School Shooting

Nashville Mar 27, 2023

What We Know So Far About the Deadly School Shooting in Nashville, Tennessee

A reeling city mourned during multiple vigils Monday evening. At Belmont United Methodist Church, teary sniffling filled the background as vigil attendees sang, knelt in prayer and lit candles. They lamented the national cycle of violent and deadly shootings, at one point reciting together, “we confess we have not done enough to protect” the children injured or killed in shootings.

“We need to step back. We need to breathe. We need to grieve,” said Paul Purdue, the church’s senior pastor. “We need to remember. We need to make space for others who are grieving. We need to hear the cries of our neighbors.”

Monday’s tragedy unfolded over roughly 14 minutes. Police received the initial call about an active shooter at 10:13 a.m.

Officers began clearing the first story of the school when they heard gunshots coming from the second level, police spokesperson Don Aaron said during a news briefing.

Two officers from a five-member team opened fire in response, fatally shooting the suspect at 10:27 a.m., Aaron said. One officer had a hand wound from cut glass.

Aaron said there were no police officers present or assigned to the school at the time of the shooting because it is a church-run school.

Other students walked to safety Monday, holding hands as they left their school surrounded by police cars, to a nearby church to be reunited with their parents.

Rachel Dibble, who was at the church as families found their children, described the scene as everyone being in “complete shock.”

“People were involuntarily trembling,” said Dibble, whose children attend a different private school in Nashville. “The children … started their morning in their cute little uniforms they probably had some Froot Loops and now their whole lives changed today.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ashbey Beasley said she happened to be visiting her sister-in-law in Tennessee, on a family vacation with her son, when the shooting at The Covenant School left three children and three adults dead.

“How is this still happening?” Beasley asked. “How are our children still dying and why are we failing them?”

“These mass shootings will continue to happen until our lawmakers step up and pass gun safety legislation,” she said. 

Note: The school shootings shown here refer to incidents categorized by Everytown as an “Attack on others”, where at least one person was killed or injured. Source: Everytown for Gun Safety’s school shootings database.
Amy O’Kruk/NBC

The attack at The Covenant School occurred after 28-year-old Audrey Hale entered the school Monday morning armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. The shooter, who police said was a transgender woman and a former student of the school, is also dead.

The three children were all 9 years old. The private Christian school serves students in pre-kindergarten through the sixth grade.

Before the press conference began, a reporter covering the attack recalled surviving a shooting herself while a middle-school student. Joylyn Bukovac, of WSMV4 Nashville, said she hid from a gunman who had already killed.

Nashville Mar 27, 2023

Three Children, Three Adults Killed in Mass Shooting at Christian School in Nashville

Nashville School Shooting Mar 27, 2023

Victims of Nashville Private School Mass Shooting Identified

Beasley was at the parade shooting with her son last year when seven people were killed. She said she has since met with more than 100 lawmakers trying to get gun safety laws passed. 

“We can’t even pass gun safety — safe storage laws in this country to protect kids from getting ahold of weapons that they shoot each other with,” she said. “Aren’t you tired of this?”

In an opinion article for NBCNews.com on Oct. 26, 2022, before the mid-term elections, she wrote: “Gun violence happens so often that if it hasn’t affected you directly, it can be easy to become jaded by the horrific details that emerge after a mass shooting.”

“For survivors like me, that’s not possible. At some point, something inside of me snapped. And it’s the same feeling I hope moves every voter, particularly those fortunate enough not to know the grief of losing a loved one or watching the innocence of a child vanish, into action.”

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How Many Mass Shooters Have Been Female?

Of the 141 U.S. mass killings since 1982, only six were carried out by women, according to data from Mother Jones. Two of those incidents saw women acting in partnership with a man.

NBC defines a mass shooting as an attack where three or more people were killed in the same incident, not including the shooter.

Nashville Mar 27, 2023

Reporter Covering Nashville School Attack Reveals She Survived a School Shooting

Nashville Mar 27, 2023

Three Children, Three Adults Killed in Mass Shooting at Christian School in Nashville

What Mass Shootings Were Carried Out by Women?

The first mass killing by a woman since 1982 took place on Jan. 30, 2006, when former postal worker Jennifer San Marco, 44, shot and killed a former neighbor before going on a suicidal rampage at a mail processing plant in Santa Barbara, Calif., where she killed six others.

In February 2014, Cherie Lash Rhoades, 44, shot six people at the Cedarville Rancheria Tribal Office and Community Center, killing four and wounding two.

Snochia Moseley, 26, killed three people in September 2018 after opening fire at a Rite Aid distribution center in Aberdeen, Md. Moseley was a temporary employee at the facility.

The shooter who killed three children and three adults in Nashville, Tenn. on March 27 identified as a transgender woman.

Tashfeen Malik and Francine Graham also carried out mass shootings with male partners. Malik, 27, and Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, killed 14 and injured more at a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2, 2015.

Graham, 50, and David N. Anderson, 47, killed three people inside a kosher grocery store and a police officer in Jersey City, N.J., on Dec. 10, 2019.

The percentage of attacks carried out by women is also small when looking at incidents beyond mass killings.

The Secret Service analyzed 173 targeted attacks from 2016 to 2020 and found that 172 of the 180 attackers (95.6%) were male. Three more were transgender, assigned female at birth but known to identify as male at the time of their attacks.

The reporter, Joylyn Bukovac of WSMV4 Nashville, said Monday’s shooting brought back her eighth-grade memories, running and not knowing where the gunman was.

“It’s just flooding back,” she said. “Flashbacks for me.”

Bukovac said that she was in a hallway with her classmates when a gunman opened fire, shooting and killing a student. 

“And just after hearing the gunshots, I just knew to run and hide,” she said.

“I hid underneath the risers in my choir class and those minutes and hours of waiting to be released by police officers, it just felt like a lifetime,” she said. “And I knew my phone was taken, it was turned off so that no one could find me.”

The shooting Monday at The Covenant School in Nashville left at least six dead, three children and three adults, plus the shooter, whom police said was a woman. She was armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun, police said.

Bukovac, who did not say where she attended school, said she knew that her family was trying to reach her. She remembered her mother’s overwhelming emotions when they were reunited. 

“And so I know exactly what some of these kids are going through today,” she said. 

Later she tweeted that she appreciated all of the support that she had received after telling her story.

"I don’t talk about it much, but I think about what happened on February 5, 2010 often," she wrote. "I just want people to know they aren’t alone. I also want to discuss solutions. As a mom, I am worried for the future."

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The announcement comes nearly three months after a gunman opened fire on the club Nov. 19, killing five people and injuring 17. The suspect was taken down by patrons of the club and later arrested and charged with 305 criminal counts, including first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault and bias-motivated crimes. 

“It was 20 years ago that I fought through a very different time in our country to ensure our community would have a safe space to gather and commune,” Matthew Haynes, the founding owner of Club Q said in a statement. “To everyone who has asked me to reopen the club, I assure you we are working very hard to bring our home back. We look forward to being able to gather as one community again.”

Colorado Dec 6, 2022

Suspect in Colorado LGBTQ Club Shooting Charged With Hate Crimes

Colorado Nov 21, 2022

Mothers, Friends, Performers Among Dead at Colorado LGBTQ+ Club Shooting

Club Q and the city of Colorado Springs are partnering with HB&A, a women-owned local architecture firm for the rebuilding plan. The initial design concepts will be delivered within the next six weeks, according to Monday’s announcement, and they will include enhanced security measures, an interior gutting of the space and a “permanent standing tribute” to honor the five people killed: Daniel Aston, Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Ashley Paugh and Derrick Rump. 

Read more at NBCNews.com.

It was the worst January, in fact, both in terms of frequency and number of fatalities, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which started tracking mass shootings in 2014. 

On Jan. 21, a shooter opened fire on people celebrating the Lunar New Year in Monterey Park, California. Two days later and about 400 miles north, another gunman went on a shooting spree targeting workers at two farms in Half Moon Bay. The killings claimed 18 lives and left two communities deeply grieving lost loved ones. 

The GVA defines mass shootings as events with four or more people shot, either killed or injured, not including the shooter. This year already, 87 have died, more than double this time last year and up overall from 45 at the end of January 2019.

The high total of people killed is tied to the record number of mass shootings. Last month, GVA logged 52 incidents and only eight days with no mass shootings. In January 2022, there were 34; previously January totals ranged from 11 to 32.

Notably, in the U.S. there’s no agreed-upon definition of the term “mass shooting,” so totals vary by organization. In contrast to the GVA, Congress defines a “mass killing” as three or more people killed (excluding the shooter) and the FBI collects data on active shooter incidents, which it defines as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” The FBI reported 61 in 2021, the most recent data available. 

The GVA’s numbers tend to be higher than other lists for two reasons. First, it includes victims who are injured and not just fatalities. Second, it includes all shootings where at least four people were shot, regardless of circumstance, and this can include gang-related activity and domestic violence. 

On the whole, the GVA data is clear that more Americans are dying of gun-related injuries. Looking at yearly statistics, there were 648 mass shootings in 2022, slightly down from 690 in 2021 but significantly up from 272 in 2014. The toll on human life is immense: last year, 676 people were killed and 2,702 injured.

In the last decade, every state has reported a mass shooting except Hawaii and North Dakota.

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Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said the man had “plenty of ammunition” and that evidence suggests he fired multiple rounds, but it wasn’t immediately known if he fired at anyone.

Schmaderer said no wounded people were found, and police had searched through the store “because there were some people hiding in there.”

Cathy Mahannah, a customer, said the scene inside the store was “sheer panic.”

The 62-year-old grandmother was near the store’s entrance picking out Valentine’s Day gifts for her family when she heard a banging sound. She thought something had fallen, then saw a mass of people running for the exit.

A shopper told her there was an active shooter, and she fled. She heard at least one more shot in the store and a few more when she was outside.

Mahannah was so rattled she initially couldn’t find her car and jumped into a vehicle with a stranger.

“The moments in that parking lot were terrifying when I heard the shots and thought, ‘Where do I hide? I don’t know what to do.’” she said.

The police chief said there were several 911 calls shortly before noon and officers were at the store within minutes.

“The first arriving officers went into the building, confronted the suspect and shot him dead,” Schmaderer said, speaking at news conference about an hour after the shooting. “He had an AR-15 rifle with him and plenty of ammunition.”

Target spokesperson Brian Harper-Tibaldo said in a statement that all guests and team members were safely evacuated from the store, which would remain closed indefinitely.

Among those employees were two 21-year-olds, Lauren Murphy and Samuel Jacobsen.

Murphy was in the restroom when she heard the shots. She texted family and friends, telling them that she loved them, and climbed onto a toilet so her feet wouldn’t show at the bottom of the stall in case the shooter came in.

Relief washed over her when police entered the restroom. A child next to her was crying.

“I was scared that this is how I might die at work,” Murphy said. “It was just terrifying.”

Jacobsen was filling a personal shopping order. He’d never heard a gunshot before and was uncertain at first what he was hearing.

“Then my coworker ran by and she said, ‘He’s got a gun, get out!’” Jacobsen said. “I was like, ‘Oh this is real. I have to get out, I have to get out, I have to get out.’”

Lt. Neal Bonacci, a police spokesperson, said officers are trained to enter such scenes quickly to prevent mass casualties.

“We’ve learned a lot from other jurisdictions, other areas, other cities that have unfortunately experienced this,” he said. “We enter right away. We’re trained to do so. Whether it’s one officer or 10, we go inside and neutralize the threat.”

The shooting came just over 15 years after the deadly December 2007 shooting at a Von Maur department store, when a 19-year-old gunman killed eight people and himself.

Nebraska allows gun owners to carry firearms in public view, as long as they don’t have a criminal record that bars them from possessing one and aren’t in a place where guns are prohibited. To legally conceal the gun, Nebraskans must submit to a state patrol background check, get fingerprinted and take a gun safety course.

Republican state Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon is sponsoring a bill that would allow people to carry concealed handguns without a permit. The measure also would prohibit cities and counties from issuing local laws with more stringent controls than the state law. The proposal has 25 cosponsors.

Jacobsen, the store employee, said he’s among those who want stricter, not looser, gun laws.

“As someone who grew up here, I always hear about this part of Omaha being so safe,” he said. But Tuesday’s shooting “really drives it home that it could happen anywhere.”

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“Our prayers are with the people of Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, and after yet another spree of gun violence in America,” he said at a Lunar New Year reception at the White House.

Eleven people were killed at a Southern California ballroom dance hall late Saturday and seven others died Monday at two mushroom farms in the northern part of the state.

Biden said he had spoken with Brandon Tsay, 26, who was at a second dance hall a few miles from the scene of the tragedy in Monterey Park when the same gunman entered, brandishing his weapon. Tsay disarmed the gunman, who then fled.

He praised Tsay’s courage, calling him a “genuine hero.”

“Brandon said he thought he was going to die, but then he thought about the people inside,” Biden said, asking the largely Asian American audience to ponder what could have happened had Tsay fled himself.

“I think sometimes we underestimate incredible acts of courage,” the president said. “Someone has a semiautomatic pistol aimed at you and you think about others. That’s pretty profound, pretty profound.”

The shootings were carried out during celebrations of the arrival of the Lunar New Year, one of the most important Asian holidays, and sent fear through Asian American communities already dealing with increased violence directed at them, some of it due to misinformation about the coronavirus.

Authorities said Huu Can Tran opened fire late Saturday on a mostly elderly crowd of dancers at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park. Nine people also were wounded. Tran, 72, was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Days later, farmworker Chunli Zhao, 66, opened fire at two mushroom farms in Half Moon Bay on Monday, killing seven current and former co-workers, police said.

The White House had scheduled its Lunar New Year celebration before the shootings.

Both communities “will be affected by what they saw and what they lost for the rest of their lives,” Biden said, referring to the trauma inflicted and the need for treatment. “And as a nation, we have to be there with them. We have to be there with them. We don’t have a choice.”

He led the gathering in a moment of silence in honor of the victims.

Biden had ordered American flags on federal facilities lowered to half-staff through sunset Thursday out of respect for the Monterey Park victims. He said Thursday that he has been in touch with California Gov. Gavin Newsom. He also sent Vice President Kamala Harris, a native of the state, to Monterey Park on Wednesday to offer condolences on behalf of the government.

Biden had been in California on Jan. 19, just two days before the dance studio shooting, to survey flood damage along the state’s central coast following days of heavy rains. He spoke with Tsay earlier this week.

“Thank you for taking such incredible action in the face of danger,” Biden told Tsay in a brief video of the conversation that the White House shared Thursday on Twitter. “I don’t think you understand how much you’ve done for so many people who are never even going to know you.”

Tsay replied that he was still processing what had happened.

“For you to call, that’s just so comforting to me,” Tsay told the president.

Four of the 10 victims were sent to LAC+USC Medical Center following the mass shooting that claimed the lives of 10. 

“The tragic events from this past weekend have shaken our communities to the core. On behalf of our medical teams and staff, I want to express our sincerest condolences to all who have been touched by this tragedy,” Jorge Orozco, Chief Executive Officer at LAC+USC Medical Center, said in a news release. 

Orozco said that despite their best efforts to save the person’s life, the victim died, bringing the mass shooting’s death toll to 11.

Jan 23, 2023

Investigators Search for Motive Behind Lunar New Year Mass Shooting

Jan 23, 2023

Lunar New Year Mass Shooter Disarmed in Heroic Act at Second Dance Studio

“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we are saddened to share that one of the victims has succumbed to their extensive injuries. We want to express our deepest sympathies to their families and loved ones,” Orozco said. 

No identifying information was released. 

One other victim in the hospital’s care was in serious condition, while two others were recovering. 

“Our medical teams are working around the clock to care for them, and we remain hopeful for their complete recoveries,” the statement continued.

The news of the latest fatality in the tragic mass shooting comes after two of the victims, both women in their 60s, were identified Monday by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office. 

The identities of other victims will be released, pending notification of family members.

The victims who died at the scene are in their 50s, 60s and 70s, according to the coroner’s office.

Here are the victims killed in the shooting who have been identified by the coroner’s office.

• Mymy Nhan, 65
• Lilan Li, 63
• Woman in her 50s
• Woman in her 60s
• Woman in her 60s
• Man in his 70s
• Man in his 70s
• Man in his 60s
• Man in his 60s
• Man in his 70s

The shooting happened following a night of Lunar New Year celebrations in the San Gabriel Valley community of Monterey Park. About 20 minutes after the gunfire at Star Ballroom Dance Studio, the gunman targeted a second dance hall in the nearby community of Alhambra, where he was disarmed, authorities said.

The man identified by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as the shooter, 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound Sunday in a van in a Torrance strip mall parking lot, the sheriff’s department said.

A motive in the shooting remains unclear, Sheriff Robert Luna said Sunday.

The massacre was the nation’s fifth mass killing this month.

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One of the victims is in critical condition, police said. No arrests have been made, but police believe the early morning attack was “targeted.”

“This was not a random act of violence, based on the preliminary investigating efforts,” Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul said at a news conference Sunday afternoon. “We believe that this was a targeted event, where someone was specifically targeted and others were injured in that process.”

Three Baton Rouge police officers were nearby when the shots were fired around 1:30 a.m. and responded to the Dior Bar & Lounge. They administered life-saving aid until emergency medical technicians arrived.

U.S. & World News

Jan 23, 2023

Lunar New Year Mass Shooter Disarmed in Heroic Act at Second Dance Studio

California Jan 22, 2023

Suspected Gunman in Lunar New Year Mass Shooting Found Dead

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‘Good Trouble' Star Sherry Cola Devastated by Mass Shooting in Her Hometown

“We believe their immediate response prevented further injuries,” Paul said.

Although police have some leads, Paul urged anyone else with information about shooting to come forward.

“There is someone who knows something — do the right thing. You can save the next incident because it is obvious that this person has total disregard for life,” Paul said.

Police did not say how many of the people shot were targeted. Paul declined to comment on how many shooters opened fire.

“I do understand the interest and everybody wanting information, but remember … we have to get this right,” Paul said about the ongoing investigation. “And sometimes, getting it right means I can’t give information right now.”

Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome — who met with mayors of other major U.S. cities in Washington, D.C., last week, to discuss the issue of crime — called the shooting “a senseless act of violence that will not go unchecked.”

“We will not stop our work until everyone feels safe and individuals no longer turn to guns to resolve their differences,” Broome tweeted.

Although the number of homicides in Baton Rouge decreased last year from 2021, Louisiana’s capital city has been plagued by gun violence. In October, an early-morning shooting near Southern University’s campus in Baton Rouge left nine people injured.

The U.S. Department of Justice disclosed the decision not to pursue capital punishment against Patrick Crusius in a one-sentence notice filed Tuesday with the federal court in El Paso.

Crusius, 24, is accused of targeting Mexicans during the Aug. 3 massacre that killed 23 people and left dozens wounded. The Dallas-area native is charged with federal hate crimes and firearms violations, as well as capital murder in state court. He has pleaded not guilty.

Federal prosecutors did not explain in their court filing the reason for their decision, though the suspect still could face the death penalty if convicted in state court.

The prosecutors’ decision could be a defining moment for the Justice Department, which has sent mixed signals on policies regarding the federal death penalty that President Joe Biden pledged to abolish during his presidential campaign. Biden is the first president to openly oppose the death penalty and his election raised the hopes of abolition advocates, who have since been frustrated by a lack of clarity on how the administration might end federal executions or whether that’s the objective.

The decision comes weeks after Jaime Esparza, the former district attorney in El Paso, took over as U.S. attorney for West Texas. Esparza said when he was district attorney that he would pursue the death penalty in the case. A spokesman for Esparza’s office referred questions to the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., where another spokesman declined to comment.

Crusius surrendered to police after the attack, saying, “I’m the shooter,” and that he was targeting Mexicans, according to an arrest warrant. Prosecutors have said he published a screed online shortly before the shooting that said it was “in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Lawyers for the accused did not immediately respond to requests for comment. His case is set for trial in federal court in January 2024.

Although the federal and state cases have progressed along parallel tracks, it is now unclear when he might face trial on state charges.

The district attorney who had been leading the state case, Yvonne Rosales, resigned in November over accusations of incompetence involving hundreds of cases in El Paso and slowing down the case against the suspect. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last month appointed a new district attorney to “restore confidence” in the local criminal justice system.

Federal prosecutors are still pursuing the death penalty in the case against Sayfullo Saipov, who is accused of using a truck in 2017 to mow down pedestrians and cyclists on a bike path in New York City. Saipov’s federal capital trial began last week.

The decision to seek death in Saipov’s case came under President Donald Trump, who during his last six months in office oversaw a historic spree of 13 federal executions. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on carrying out federal executions in 2021, but he allowed U.S. prosecutors to continue to seek the death penalty against Saipov while the department reviews Trump era death penalty procedures.

Tarm reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed.