(Washington) Three youths have been arrested and charged with murder in Alabama, in the southern United States, after shootings at a birthday party this weekend left four dead and around 30 injured, a local authorities said Wednesday.
Alabama police spokesman Sergeant Jeremy Burkett announced at a press conference that 17-year-old Ty Reik McCullough and 16-year-old Travis McCullough have been arrested and charged with murder.
The two teenagers, from Tuskegee, not far from where the shootings occurred, were taken into custody on Tuesday evening, Sergeant Burkett said.
They will face trial as adults, added Attorney General Mike Segrest, adding that four hospitalized victims were still in serious condition.
Later that day, Alabama authorities tweeted a third arrest. Wilson LaMar Hill Jr., 20, was charged with four counts of homicide.
Saturday, a birthday party for a teenager who was celebrating her 16e anniversary in the small town of Dadeville degenerated when shooting broke out, killing four young people aged 17 to 23 and injuring 32.
Among the dead is Philstavious Dowdell, the older brother of the girl who was celebrating her birthday. The 18-year-old was an accomplished athlete who received a scholarship to play football at Jacksonville State University.
The party seems to have degenerated when the mother of the young girl who was celebrating her birthday announced to the guests that she had learned that people were armed, asking them to leave, according to media.
The authorities have not yet given any information on the motive of the shooters.
Despite the young age of the victims and the tragic circumstances, this shooting did not make headlines in the United States and provoked relatively little political reaction, even if President Joe Biden was moved that America was “a once again bereaved” by shooting.
The repetition of tragedies of this type – a few days earlier, a man had killed five people in a bank in Kentucky – reinforces a certain fatalism in public opinion.
The country, which has more individual weapons than inhabitants, pays a heavy price for their dissemination.
The very high death rate from firearms is without comparison with that of other developed countries.