COLUMBIA, SC (AP) — Masked gunmen fired into a crowd without warning at a teen night party at a South Carolina park over the weekend, injuring nine people, a sheriff said.
All nine hit by gunfire They are expected to be alive, as well as a woman who was injured when she was run over by a fleeing car and another person who was cut on the hand, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said in a Sunday Update on Saturday’s shooting.
“So happy and so glad and so grateful that right now we believe everyone will survive,” Lott said. “It’s not because those who did the filming didn’t try.”
Deputies were called to Meadowlake Park near Columbia around 1:20 a.m. Saturday and found few people at the scene. Not long after, hospitals began reporting multiple gunshot victims arriving in emergency rooms, lawmakers said.
Teens from several high schools gathered at the park for the after-hours “flash party,” which was announced on social media and not sponsored by the local recreation commission, Lott said.
“These were people who put it on social media and said, ‘Come on,’ and the bad people came,” the sheriff said.
The shooting appeared unprovoked, Lott said.
“If you think wearing a mask to sneak around a building and shoot into a crowd makes you a man — no, you’re a coward,” the sheriff said.
Many of the wounded were hit in the back trying to run away, Lott said.
Dozens of shell casings from various guns were collected at the park, but Lott said he was unwilling to say exactly how many people might have fired.
The injured are between 16 and 20 years old. Lott said some would have surgery on Sunday.
Officers arrested two teenagers in a vehicle driving away from the scene with its headlights off and found a gun thrown from the vehicle, but Lott said investigators are still trying to determine if it was used in the shooting.
Lott said he expects his deputies to make more arrests soon.