At least three people were killed and eight wounded in a mass shooting in Fort Worth, Texas, after a local festival, officials said on Tuesday, in the latest incident of gun violence around the Fourth of July holiday.
The shooting took place just before midnight on Monday in a parking lot, as police confirmed on Tuesday.
One person was pronounced dead at the scene, and two others died in the hospital. An additional eight people were hospitalized, but their conditions were not known, CBS News reported. An ABC News affiliate said 10 of the victims were adults and one was a juvenile.
The shooting occurred in the Como section of Fort Worth, hours after the end of the neighbourhood’s annual ComoFest. The festival is a celebration of the Fourth of July holiday, on which the United States celebrates its independence.
The motive for the shooting and the number of suspects involved were not immediately clear. No arrests have been made.
“We don’t know if this is domestic-related or gang-related. It is too early to tell at this point,” said Shawn Murray, a senior official with the Fort Worth Police Department.
The United States has been struggling with a large number of mass shootings and incidents of gun violence. There have been over 340 mass shootings so far in 2023 in the country, according to data collected by the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.
In a separate shooting incident on Monday night, five people were killed and two were injured in Philadelphia, and a suspect was taken into custody, according to local police.
The Monday night shootings came a day after two people were shot dead and 28 others injured, about half of them children, in a hail of gunfire at an outdoor neighbourhood block party in Baltimore, Maryland. Police said they were seeking multiple suspects in that shooting.
