At least five people, including an off-duty police officer, were killed in a shooting Thursday in the North Carolina capital of Raleigh, with a suspect in the southeast US city saying officials have been arrested.
Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said the shooting took place near the Neues River Greenway, a popular route in the area.
“It’s a sad and sad day for the city of Raleigh. After 5:00 p.m. today, several people were shot,” she told a news conference.
The Raleigh Police Department has “confirmed that five people were killed. One of them was an off-duty Raleigh police officer.”
The shooter, a “white male teen,” was taken into custody shortly after 9:30 p.m., Raleigh Police Lieutenant Jason Borneo said in a follow-up press conference.
The mayor previously reported that the shooter was “kept at a residence in the area” by police.
Borneo said one victim remained in critical condition.
Among the wounded was a canine officer who was taken to hospital, although Borneo reported that an injured police officer had been released.
When asked about the reason behind the firing, he said it is likely to be “successful” in the coming days.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, who attended the evening’s press conference, told reporters: “Terror has arrived at our door tonight.”
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“The nightmare of every community has come to Raleigh. This is a senseless, horrific and brutal act of violence that has been committed.”
According to the Gun Violence Archive website, gun violence is a major problem in the United States, where more than 34,000 people have died in shootings so far in 2022 alone, more than half of them by suicide.
“We must do more,” Baldwin said at the news conference.
“We must stop this mindless violence in America. We must address gun violence. We have so much to do, and we have so much to mourn tonight.”
The North Carolina shooting comes on a day a jury rejected the death penalty and upheld life imprisonment for Nicolas Cruz, who shot and killed 17 people at a Florida high school in 2018.
As mass shootings have stunned the nation time and again, debates have resurfaced over gun control, a hot-button cultural issue that has made little progress in Congress.
However, several recent gun stampedes, including a shooting at a Texas school and a supermarket frequented by African-Americans in New York state, have caused particular shock across the country, prompting lawmakers to agree for the first time in June. 30 years to pass minor reforms to gun control laws.
According to the Small Arms Survey Project, there were approximately 400 million guns in circulation among the civilian population in the United States in 2017, or 120 guns for every 100 people.
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