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Austin shootings leave one person dead and multiple people injured | |
(about 1 hour later) | |
A woman has been killed and four other people shot in an incident in Texas that was initially feared to be the work of a shooter attacking in multiple locations. | |
Austin police were called to two incidents in the area in the city’s historic Sixth Street entertainment district within minutes of each other in the early hours of Sunday, prompting fears that a person was firing randomly. | |
The police put out a warning of “active shooter incident downtown”, telling people to stay away from the area. But at a press conference later, the Austin police chief, Brian Manley, said that was “based on the information we had at that time”. | |
At 2.17am, police received a call saying a woman had been shot in Sixth Street and seven minutes later a call saying an individual had been assaulted with shots fired in Trinity Street, a few blocks away. | |
At the press conference, Manley said: “At this time we do not believe [that it was an active shooter] nor are we classifying this as an active shooter. What we had was two separate incidents that occurred in very close proximity to each other both in location and time that made us initially believe it was an active shooter.” | |
Active shooter incident downtown, multiple victims. Stay away from downtown. Media: Dont call for updates at this time, more to follow. PIO6 | Active shooter incident downtown, multiple victims. Stay away from downtown. Media: Dont call for updates at this time, more to follow. PIO6 |
He said the Sixth Street incident was believed to have begun after a disturbance between two individuals led one of them to shoot into the crowd. | |
A woman, believed to be in her 20s, died on the scene. Four other people were shot, three women, believed to be in their 30s, who were taken to University Medical Center Brackenridge, and a man who refused to be taken to hospital. Commander Mike Benavides of Austin-Travis County emergency services said the women taken to hospital had serious but non-life-threatening injuries. | |
The shooter, believed to be a light-skinned black man or Hispanic man, escaped, said Manley. | |
“As officers arrived, as you can imagine with this being shortly after 2am and the large crowds that we have on Sixth Street at this time, all the individuals leaving the bars, it was a very chaotic scene, a lot of people running in different directions with all the gunshots running out,” he said. He praised the police response as “fantastic”, saying they were on the scene immediately. | |
Update: separate shootings within the same area. Both scenes are secure at this time. PIO responding to identify staging area. | Update: separate shootings within the same area. Both scenes are secure at this time. PIO responding to identify staging area. |
Manley said the second incident involved a dispute in a parking garage with one man pulling out and firing a weapon before being “taken down” by other people who observed the disturbance. The gunman was taken to hospital for injuries incurred while he was disarmed but no one else was injured. Benavides said the gunman was believed to be in his 20s and had not suffered life-threatening injuries. | |
Manley appealed for people to forward to police any video they had of the Sixth Street incident. | |
A video posted on Twitter purporting to be from the scene of the shooting showed people running and screaming after shots were heard. Sam Vedamanikam, who posted the footage, tweeted: “I think it was a fight. Police ran immediately into it. Props to the police. We ran to 7th Street to get away from 6th.” | A video posted on Twitter purporting to be from the scene of the shooting showed people running and screaming after shots were heard. Sam Vedamanikam, who posted the footage, tweeted: “I think it was a fight. Police ran immediately into it. Props to the police. We ran to 7th Street to get away from 6th.” |