Police shot suspect in Tucson; nine wounded at Minneapolis nightclub
A total of 19 people were injured early Sunday in mass shootings in entertainment districts in Tucson and Minneapolis, authorities said. In Tucson, police responded to gunfire in a crowded downtown area and shot a suspect who was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. In Minneapolis, nine people were wounded outside a nightclub in the city’s Uptown district.
Tucson Police Department officers were on foot patrol in the downtown area around 2 a.m. local time when they heard gunfire and ran toward the scene, police spokesman Frank Magos told reporters. Officers encountered a male suspect and ordered him to drop his weapon, Magos said. After repeating the order several times, an officer shot and injured the suspect, who was then hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. Magos described the suspect as a local man whose identity was being withheld.
Police said all nine of the hospitalized victims from the Tucson shooting were adults and that most of them sustained injuries to their extremities. A 10th person suffered minor injuries.
In Minneapolis, nine adults were injured in a shooting outside a nightclub in the city’s Uptown district early Sunday, according to interim Minneapolis Police Chief Bill Peterson. Two of the male victims sustained potentially life-threatening injuries, he told reporters. The first officers arrived on the scene in less than a minute after the initial gunfire reports and found “a chaotic scene, with multiple victims and a large crowd,” Peterson said. He called the shooting “a brazen act of violence in a crowded entertainment district where innocent people were placed at tremendous risk that is absolutely unacceptable.”
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero called the incident in her city “another serious and senseless act of gun violence.” “A shooter recklessly began shooting in a crowded area striking nine people before being stopped by a Tucson Police Officer,” she said in a statement. “Thanks to the quick actions and excellent care provided by our fire fighters and police officers, all victims were stabilized and taken to the hospital where we are hopeful they will all recover.” The mayor said “easy access to guns” and “Arizona’s weak gun safety laws” continue to “put all of us at risk” and argued that “from requiring universal background checks to extreme risk laws to funding violence prevention there is more lawmakers can and should do.”
Former Arizona congresswoman and gun control advocate Gabby Giffords said she was “heartbroken to learn that nine people were shot early this morning in downtown Tucson.” “Too many lives have been changed forever because of America’s gun violence crisis, in my hometown and across the nation,” she said in a statement. Giffords added that she and her husband, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, are “grateful for the bravery of Tucson’s first responders as we await more information and hold all those impacted in our hearts.”