Juneteenth block party rocked by shootings

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina－Three people were killed and six others were wounded on Monday when multiple people fired into a crowd at an impromptu celebration in Charlotte, the largest city in the southern US state of North Carolina, police said. Five others were hit by vehicles.

The shooting happened at an impromptu block party in Charlotte that was a continuation of Juneteenth celebrations, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Deputy Chief Gerald Smith said at a media briefing on Monday.

About 400 people gathered on the north side of the city when someone in the crowd was struck during a hit-and-run accident, Smith said. Police responding to the scene heard shots being fired. They believe more than one person fired weapons because videos recorded sounds from guns of different calibers. Authorities recovered around 100 casings from the scene.

Maliyah Cook, a witness and relative of one of the victims, said the mood of the crowd leading up to the shooting had been calm. Suddenly, she heard gunshots.

"I really felt like it was a good party. I don't know what happened," Cook said.

As Cook was running, she said she looked down to see her cousin, 29-year-old Kelly Miller, fatally wounded in the middle of the street. Police have said Miller was pronounced dead at the scene, while 28-year-old Christopher Antonio Gleaton was pronounced dead after being transported to the hospital.

On Monday afternoon, police said a third victim had been pronounced dead, 39-year-old Jamaa Keon Cassell. Smith said no motive was clear for the shooting.

In Chicago, 104 people were shot over the Father's Day weekend. Of the 14 shot dead, five were children, local media reported.

Those shootings from Friday to Monday produced the city's highest number of shooting victims in a single weekend this year.

Bullets ruin safety

"Bullets don't just tear apart the things they strike," Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said at a news conference on Sunday. "Bullets also tear apart families. Bullets destroy neighborhoods and they ruin any sense of safety in a community."

The weekend saw more shootings but fewer fatalities than the last weekend of May, when 85 people had been shot, 24 fatally, making it Chicago's deadliest weekend in years.

In Minneapolis, a shooting in a popular night life area early on Sunday left one man dead and 11 people wounded in a chaotic scene that sent people ducking into restaurants and other businesses for cover.

Meanwhile, Seattle authorities, alarmed by two weekend shootings, plan to start dismantling six blocks of streets in a part of the city occupied by activists protesting against police brutality and racial inequality across the US.

A teenager was killed and at least two other people were wounded in the shootings in what is known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone.

Xinhua - Agencies