At least three people died and nine others were injured in a shooting Monday in Farmington, in the US state of New Mexico.
“There are multiple civilian casualties,” the Farmington Police Department said in a Facebook post. An 18-year-old suspect “was confronted and shot on the spot”.
Two officers suffered gunshot wounds, the publication said, including a member of the City Police and a member of the New Mexico State Police, according to the post. Both are in stable condition at San Juan Regional Hospital.
Officers who attended found “a chaotic scene” of a man shooting at people on a residential street, Farmington Police Chief Baric Crum told a news conference.
“There are no other known threats at this time,” he said, adding that San Juan County and state police departments have come to assist city officers.
Investigators must now survey a crime scene that spans several city blocks, he said.
The shooting was reported shortly after 11 a.m. in the Brookside Park neighborhood, and all schools in the city were placed in “preventive confinement”. Three nearby schools have been placed in emergency lockdown.
Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement to pray for the families of the victims. According to her, the tragedy “is a further reminder of how gun violence destroys lives”.
Area MP Teresa Leger Fernandez, also a Democrat, lamented the gun violence that “took the lives of our elders, injured two police officers and terrified the small community of Farmington.”
Farmington is a city of nearly 50,000 people located in northwestern New Mexico near the Four Corners region. It serves as a modern trading post for the adjacent Navajo Nation and is a supply line and bedroom community for the region’s oil and natural gas industry.
Gun violence has been extremely common in the United States for many years. This year, more than 220 shootings that have left more than four people dead or injured have already been recorded by the Gun Violence Archive site.
With Agence France-Presse