Four people were killed and multiple others injured in a shooting on Saturday night that was tied to a birthday party in the small town of Dadeville, Ala., the state law enforcement agency said.
“We’re going to continue to work in a very methodical way to go through this scene, to look at the facts and ensure that justice is brought to bear for the families,” Sgt. Jeremy Burkett of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency told a news conference on Sunday morning.
The shooting occurred at about 10:34 p.m. CT on Saturday, according to the agency. Officials provided no information about what led to the shooting, and it was not known if any suspects had been taken into custody.
Tallapoosa County Schools superintendent Raymond Porter said at the news conference that counselling would be provided at area schools on Monday, and he asked local clergy to help families through the situation.
“We will make every effort to comfort those children and don’t lose sight of the fact that those are the ones most impacted by this situation,” Porter said.
The FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Fifth Circuit District Attorney’s Office had also responded to the scene and were assisting with the investigation, according to a news release from the state law enforcement agency.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a Twitter post on Sunday morning that she was staying “closely updated” by law enforcement as details emerged.
“This morning, I grieve with the people of Dadeville and my fellow Alabamians,” she wrote in the post. “Violent crime has NO place in our state.”
The shooting occurred within weeks of two high-profile mass shootings in the nearby states of Tennessee and Kentucky, which prompted local leaders to call for tighter gun control measures last week.
A bank employee fatally shot five colleagues and wounded nine other people at his workplace in Louisville, Ky., on Monday. On March 27, three nine-year-olds and three staff members were killed at a private Christian school in Nashville by a former student.
Mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States. There have been more than 146 so far in 2023, the most at this point in the year since at least 2016, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The non-profit group defines a mass shooting as four or more people injured or killed in a shooting, not including the shooter.
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