Sacramento police said Monday they had arrested a first suspect in a shooting that killed at least six people and injured 12 others in the California capital, one of the worst such incidents in the United States since the beginning of the year. .
“Investigators have identified 26-year-old Diandre Martin as a suspect. “Martin has been arrested and charged with assault and illegal possession of firearms,” police said in a press release, adding that they had searched three houses as part of an investigation.
Sacramento police initially said the gunmen who opened fire were “enough” and that a stolen pistol had been recovered and confiscated at the scene of the massacre.
However, the circumstances that led to the outbreak of violence have not been investigated, in particular whether the fires had specific targets or were fired indiscriminately.
The tragedy unfolded in the early hours of Sunday, around 02:00, in the center of the big city, at a time when several bars and nightclubs in the district are closing.
Videos circulating on social networking sites depict a major brawl on the road in which many people got involved, followed by shootings and people fleeing.
“We do not know if this quarrel really led to the rifle. “We are still in the process of investigating the details,” Zakari Eaton, a police spokesman, told the Los Angeles Times before the arrest was announced.
He clarified that at least two people who opened fire are wanted, if not more.
Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester said patrol officers heard multiple gunshots and when they arrived on the scene they were found in front of a “crowd” of people and “several people wounded by bullets”.
Over a hundred calyxes
On-the-spot, police officers recovered “over a hundred caps” and found that “at least three buildings and three cars were hit by fire,” police clarified in the press release he published.
“It was horrible,” Barry Axius, an activist who arrived on the scene a few minutes after the massacre, told local television station KXTV. He described “bloodthirsty victims, people screaming, crying, others asking where their brother or mother was, looking for their sons”.
The deadly incident broke out a short distance from the headquarters of the California government and the indoor basketball stadium that is the headquarters of the Sacramento Kings.
The Kings welcomed the former NBA champion, the Golden State Warriors, on Sunday, and before the start of the match, there was a minute of silence in honor of the victims of the massacre.
The guests’ coach, Steve Kerr, who has repeatedly spoken out on the issue of gun violence, called on the authorities to tighten gun laws to prevent further such tragedies in the future.
“This is probably the ninth or tenth time we have observed a minute’s silence as Warriors coach, mourning people who were killed by a rifle,” he said, without hiding his indignation. “At some point, our government has to make a decision: Will we have sensible gun laws? “They will not solve everything, but they will save lives,” he added, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
The day before yesterday, President Joe Biden also called for action. “America mourns once again (…). “We have to do more than just mourn, we have to take action,” he said, urging Congress to repeal legislation that would tighten controls on the firearms market.
Exchanges of fire in public places are creepily frequent in the USA – in schools, in shopping malls, in supermarkets, in places of worship, in workplaces …
According to the Small Arms Survey, in 2017 there were some 393 million firearms in the United States, more than the population. The right to own a firearm is guaranteed by the Constitution.
Countless parliamentary and government initiatives to tighten gun control have ended up in the trash in Congress, where the powerful arms lobby, the NRA, wields considerable influence.
Since the beginning of the year, the Gun Violence Archive has recorded more than 10,700 firearm deaths in the United States, including suicides. Throughout 2021, 45,000 deaths were counted, according to the same source.
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