Four killed in Alabama birthday party shooting
At least four people were killed and 28 wounded in a shooting that erupted during a late-night “Sweet 16” birthday celebration at a dance studio in the small U.S town of Dadeville, Alabama.
Authorities said on Sunday that some of the injured were critically wounded during the shooting in east-central Alabama, about 60 miles (100 km) northeast of the state capital of Montgomery.
The shooting reportedly started shortly after 10:30 p.m. CT on Saturday but authorities declined to answer questions or provide further details during two Sunday news conferences.
“What has our nation come to when children cannot attend a birthday party without fear?” President Joe Biden said in a statement on Sunday.
Biden called the rising gun violence in the U.S. “outrageous and unacceptable,” and urged the U.S. Congress to pass laws to make firearms manufacturers more liable for gun violence, ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, and require safe storage of firearms and background checks for gun sales.
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Officials said there was no longer any threat to the community but did not say whether a suspect has been killed or arrested. There was no official word on what led to the gun violence.
“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,” said Jeremy Burkett, a sergeant with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.
The Montgomery Advertiser newspaper reported that one of the four people killed during the violence was a high school football player who was among those attending his sister’s “Sweet 16” birthday party when a gunman opened fire.
The newspaper, quoting the victim’s grandmother, identified the slain teenager as Phil Dowdell, whom she said was set to graduate in a matter of weeks and planned to attend Jacksonville State University on a football scholarship.
The party was being held inside the Mahogany Masterpiece Dance Studio, converted from an old bank building located about half a block from city hall in Dadeville, a town of about 3,200 residents.
Hundreds of community members gathered early on Sunday evening in a parking lot a few blocks from the shooting scene for an outdoor prayer vigil.
Mass shootings have become commonplace in the U.S., with more than 163 so far in 2023, the most at this point in the year since at least 2016, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The bloodshed in Alabama marked the third high-profile mass shooting in as many weeks in the U.S. South, following separate outbreaks of deadly gun violence in Tennessee and Kentucky that prompted local leaders to call for tighter gun control measures.
Dadeville itself was shaken by at least one prior mass shooting in August of 2016, when a gunman wounded five people during a party at an American Legion hall, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.
Zainab Sa’id
