Pine Street gunfire wounded 35 at Dooly High homecoming block party
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation formally joined the inquiry into Sunday’s Vienna block-party shooting at the Dooly County Sheriff’s Office’s request, the bureau said, describing operations as “active and ongoing.” Dooly County Coroner Brett Walls, interviewed by CBS News, the BBC’s US media partner, identified the two people killed as men ages 20 and 23, and the GBI’s Medical Examiner’s Office said it would conduct autopsies in each case.
The gunfire erupted around 1:30 a.m. local time Sunday along Pine Street in Vienna, a rural community in Dooly County in south-central Georgia, as a crowd of roughly 1,000 people gathered for a Dooly High School homecoming block party. The school said the event was not school-sponsored.
Dooly County Sheriff Craig Peavy told local media that some in the crowd initially mistook the burst of gunfire for fireworks. “Some people were reporting fireworks and then someone said somebody been shot,” Peavy said. He said deputies then worked their way through the crowd as people ran in different directions, with authorities moving toward the wounded. Ashley Gee, who was present, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the barrage of gunfire sounded “like a machine gun.”
The sheriff’s office had positioned deputies at both ends of the gathering in anticipation of a large crowd. The two deceased were found several blocks from the shooting scene on Pine Street, according to officials. Twenty-five others were transported to multiple nearby hospitals, some in critical condition; victims’ ages ranged from 14 to 51.
Dooly High School issued a statement expressing condolences for the victims and their families. “Our hearts are with the families grieving the loss of loved ones, those who were injured, and everyone affected by this tragedy,” the school said. No known arrests had been made and authorities had not announced a possible motive for the violence.