Authorities in Birmingham, Alabama, on Monday announced they were offering a reward of up to $100,000 to the public for information leading to an arrest in a weekend shooting that left four people dead and more than a dozen injured.
Police Chief Scott Thurmond said at a news conference that police were still reviewing the call and that five of the injured remained in hospital.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward and Crime Stoppers is also offering $50,000, and tips can remain anonymous, officials said.
Four people were killed and 17 injured in Saturday’s shooting, in which multiple gunmen opened fire outside a popular nightspot in Birmingham’s Five Points South neighborhood in what police described as a targeted “attack,” but authorities have not yet made any arrests.
The shooting, which rocked a neighborhood packed with restaurants and bars that are usually bustling on weekend nights, was one of several in the city this year that have unsettled residents and prompted domestic and international officials to call for help both in solving the incident and addressing the broader problem of gun violence.
“Our number one priority is finding the shooter and getting him off our streets,” Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said the day after the shooting.
The shooting happened on the sidewalk and in the street outside the Hush lounge in the entertainment district, and bloodstains were still visible on the sidewalk outside the venue Sunday morning.
Thurmond said authorities believe the shooting was aimed at one of the people killed and appears to have been a murder-for-hire. A vehicle pulled up and “multiple gunmen” got out and opened fire before fleeing, he said.
“We believe there has been an ‘attack’ so to speak, on that particular individual,” Mr Thurmond said.
About 100 shell casings were recovered, police said. Thurmond said authorities were working to identify the weapons used but believe some of the shootings were “full automatic.” Investigators are also looking into whether someone fired back, sparking a shootout.
Police said in a statement late Sunday that the shooters are believed to have used a “machine gun conversion device” to increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle.
Some of the survivors were seriously injured.
Officers found two men and one woman on the sidewalk with gunshot wounds and were pronounced dead at the scene. A second male shooting victim was pronounced dead at a hospital, police said.
Police identified the three victims found on the sidewalk as Anitra Holloman, 21, of the Birmingham suburb of Bessemer, Taj Booker, 27, of Birmingham, and Carlos McCain, 27, of Birmingham. The identity of the fourth victim has not been confirmed.
By early Sunday morning, victims had begun arriving at hospitals and police had identified 17 people with injuries, several of which were life-threatening. Four of the surviving victims were in stable to critical condition and were being treated Sunday afternoon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, according to hospital spokeswoman Alicia Rohan.
Popular nightspot rocked by gunfire
The area of Birmingham where the shooting occurred is popular with young people because of its proximity to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, as well as restaurants and bars.
The shooting marks the nation’s 31st mass killing in 2024, of which 23 were mass shootings, according to James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor at Northeastern University who oversees a mass murder database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in collaboration with the university.
Three of the 23 mass shootings nationwide this year have happened in Birmingham, including two earlier mass shootings that killed four people.
Another shooting. Is it related?
Three more people were shot, one of them fatally, in another location in Birmingham on Sunday night, AL.com reported, and police said they were investigating whether the incidents were related to a shooting the day before.
Police said a man and woman were found unconscious and taken to a hospital where the man died and the woman suffered life-threatening injuries. Police are still trying to determine whether a third shooting victim, who arrived at the hospital in a private vehicle, was shot in the same incident, Officer Truman Fitzgerald said.
Mayor calls for solutions to gun violence
Woodfin said gun violence is an epidemic in America and in the city, and expressed frustration with the situation.
“The year 2024 will see gun violence reach epidemic levels and become a crisis for our nation, and unfortunately, the city of Birmingham is at the tip of that spear,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Jonathan Mathis in Nashville, Tennessee, and Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland, contributed to this report.