Two people killed in Virginia shooting after high school graduation ceremony
Two people were killed in a shooting outside a high school graduation ceremony in Virginia on Tuesday.
Five others were wounded by the gunfire outside the Altria Theater and in an adjacent park in the city of Richmond.
A 19-year-old suspect tried to flee the scene but was arrested, and will be charged with two counts of second-degree murder, police said.
Rick Edwards, the interim chief of Richmond Police, said two people who died were both men, aged 18 and 36. Their names were not released.
Police believe the suspect, who was not immediately identified, knew at least one of the victims.
“As they heard the gunfire, it was obviously chaos,” Mr Edwards said. “We had hundreds of people in Monroe Park, so people scattered. It was very chaotic at the scene.”
Officers inside the theatre, where the graduation ceremony for Huguenot High School was taking place, heard gunfire around 5.15pm local time and phoned police outside, Mr Edwards said.
He added that two suspects were initially detained, but one was later determined to be uninvolved. Officers said that multiple handguns were recovered from the scene.
Jonathan Young, a member of the school board, said that graduates and other attendees were exiting the building when they heard about 20 gunshots in rapid succession.
“That prompted, as you would expect, hundreds of persons in an effort to flee the gunfire to return to the building,” he told the local TV station WWBT. “It materialised in a stampede.”
Two people were treated for falls; one juvenile was struck by a car and sustained injuries that were not life-threatening; and nine people were treated at the scene for minor injuries or anxiety, according to a police spokeswoman.
Jason Kamras, the superintendent of Richmond’s public schools, said the new graduates were outside taking photos with families and friends when the shooting broke out.
“I don’t have any more words on this,” Mr Kamras said. “I’m just tired of seeing people get shot, our kids get shot. And I beg of the entire community to stop, to just stop.”
Levar Stoney, the mayor of Richmond, vowed to ensure anyone responsible faces justice. “This should not be happening anywhere,” he said.
John Willard, 69, who lives next to the scene, said he stepped onto his balcony of his 18th floor apartment when the gunshots rang out.
“There was one poor woman in front of the apartment block next to ours who was wailing and crying,” he said, adding that the scene left him deeply saddened.
Meanwhile, Edythe Payne was helping her daughter sell flowers to students outside the theater when the incident occured.
“I felt bad because some elderly people were at the graduation and they got knocked down to the ground,” she said.
The school district said a different graduation scheduled for later on Tuesday had been cancelled “out of an abundance of caution” and schools would be closed on Wednesday.
