(Washington) American police were on Monday trying to understand how, and why, a teenager’s birthday party turned tragic this weekend in the southern United States, with four killed and around 20 injured after shots.
Since the events on Saturday evening in the state of Alabama, the authorities have maintained an unusual silence in a country where the police are nevertheless experienced in communicating about shootings, tragedies that punctuate the daily life of Americans.
The police limited their statements and leaked very few details about the circumstances. No arrests have been announced, and the motive of the alleged shooter is unknown.
We just know that shots interrupted the party of a teenager, who was celebrating her 16th birthday in a dance hall in Dadeville.
Four people died, including, according to the media, the girl’s brother, and 28 others were injured, some seriously.
State authority official Jeremy Burkett said officers were in a “methodical” process of gathering information to figure out who, exactly, was in that room.
“We’re not going to rush into risking failure,” he said.
“We need to get information from locals,” Burkett insisted at a press conference on Sunday. “I can’t stress this enough. Even if you think it’s minor, you should definitely tell us. »
Initial information has nevertheless been released on the profile of the victims, who seem to be mostly teenagers.
The birthday teenager’s big brother, Philstavious Dowdell, was an accomplished young athlete.
The football coach at the college he was to go to said on Sunday that he was “a wonderful young man with a bright future.”
A schoolgirl is also among those killed, according to CNN.
Witnesses said they heard the first shots a few minutes later.
One of those injured on Saturday evening participated in a rally the next afternoon in tribute to the victims, still in his hospital uniform, according to the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper.
“I saw a group of girls dancing, and that’s when the shots rang out,” Taniya Cox said.
The young woman said she saw “other shooters” as she walked through the room, a detail that has not been confirmed by police. “They told me to get out or I’d get shot. »
Taniya Cox said she was shot twice in the right arm.
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 though President Joe Biden expressed emotion that the United States was “ again bereaved” by gunfire.
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.
