Police share details on shooting at high school graduation in Richmond

sorry for the delay folks all right I'd like to provide an update to what I previously discussed last time at seven so tragically two of our life-threatening victims have passed away we still have the same amount of seven total gunshot wound victims the four of them that are non-life-threatening a 14 year old male a 32 year old male a 55 year old male and a 58 year old male the one remaining life-threatening victim is 31 years old I also mentioned last time that we had one person who was struck by a car that individual was nine years old she was treated at the scene and then released and subsequently went to a local hospital where she continues to have non-life-threatening wounds I also mentioned last time that we had two subjects in custody I'd like to clarify that at this point one of the subjects was detained was armed with a firearm but we believe based upon our investigation at this time that he is uninvolved in the shooting itself we have another individual who is in custody who is 19 years old who we believe was involved in the shooting at this point in consultation with the Richmond Commonwealth's attorney's office we plan on seeking charges for second-degree murder times two for that individual with more potential charges to follow this time I'd like to just express my concerns and sympathy for those who have lost their lives today and those whose lives were forever changed by the events today I'd also like to thank the partners that rushed to this scene the Richmond police officers the VCU police security and police officers Capitol Police Virginia State Police even Henrico and certainly our state and federal Partners Virginia State Police as I mentioned but certainly ATF FBI are all assisting in the complicated case that this is right now at this point so we anticipate having a further update tomorrow the mayor's office will be providing you all with updates on when that press conference will take place I can answer a few questions here I'm not going to be able to give a lot more detail than I've already provided but I'm but I'm I can answer a few chief could you in many blocks of this area yes well it obviously is a large scene we always start out larger than we need and then bring it back we anticipate uh we will be breaking down this crime scene within the next 20 or 30 minutes our forensic technicians have completed much of their work they're recamvassing we have canines looking for additional firearms and casings in case we missed any but we feel pretty good about where we are forensically at this time we anticipate breaking much of this down very shortly deceased are an 18 year old male and a 36 year old male we are not prepared to release the names at this point but we will in days to come the family is uh the families are obviously grieving at this point they have been notified that was the hang up for us initially but we'd like to before we release those names we'd like to give them a bit of time to to grieve we think the the suspect knew at least one of the victims the subject is the 19 year old suspect is a male and I'm unclear if he's currently a student we've recovered uh handguns in this case yes the 18 year old that was a 18 year old shot is that a student and graduating today yes of one of the graduates he was here for the graduation we'll be releasing more of that tomorrow Retreat or run to the parking garage or where were they apprehended I guess so as I mentioned earlier we had three off-duty Richmond police officers working the event itself they were outside directing traffic and we had seven along uh the Belvedere Corridor blocking traffic so that people could get in and out as they heard the gunfire it was obviously chaos we had hundreds of people in Monroe Park so people scattered it was very chaotic at the scene I can tell you that the person we believe is the uh who is going to be charged was detained initially by VCU security and was taken into custody and he is currently at the Richmond Police Department headquarters did that happen like here in the park or have you left close by he fled the scene and then uh was taken into custody and uh is now on our custody are all police Personnel uninjured yes no no officers were injured no officers discharged their weapons by foot and as I mentioned earlier but it's it's getting clearer now at this point we don't believe we're not looking for anyone else at this time we do however we know that there were hundreds of people out here that may have some of this captured on videotape so we would ask folks to to contact the Richmond police department and we will set up a hotline by tomorrow where if they have video they'd like to share with us we can put that out there so but I'm sure plenty of folks are out here celebrating the day taking videos taking pictures and they may have valuable information obviously there's plenty of cameras here that we're in the process of reviewing and that's a laborious process um but but we would ask the public if they have something like that to please share it with us to the high school that was graduating was the suspect no one was released prior to the same that's all part of the investigation I'm not aware of if he was 19 years old so I don't believe he was graduating this today I'm not sure about that so with the individual we detained there were a total of four Firearms used so one of them is completely unrelated and we're investigating that's going to be part of the investigation we will be utilizing nibin to determine which Firearms were directly involved and which weren't but there was there was guns on the scene that we recovered these I believe these were all handguns were covered at this point that's we're still very early in the investigation but that'll be part of what we're going to ask from our investigators as I said we're getting help from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco farms and explosives as well as the FBI and Virginia State Police are all and BCU police that are all part of that active investigation with with what we're doing right now well it's certainly traumatic for for them uh I heard the call come over my radio and you could hear the chaos and screaming so we will be following up with them but they saw you know obviously they saw two people in Dire Straits and two who who eventually died and then a 14 year old child who was also wounded so it was chaotic and then it was also very complicated the early reports are always challenging so we had reports of many more people because people were having panic attacks falling on the ground screaming as I mentioned before some people fell one per one child was hit by a car so this was a very chaotic scene but our officers and with our partners in very short order started to make sense of the chaos getting folks the the resources they needed and preparing for an event like this and we we prepared for it with our partners and hoping that this day wouldn't come but it but it came to Richmond today first time at a graduation I've heard of yeah what do you say to folks who just want to live life every day and be in public and not be terrified to do that well you know obviously this should have been a safe space that people should have felt safe at a graduation superintendent cameras mentioned that and it's just incredibly tragic that someone decided to bring a gun to to this incident and Rain Terror on on our community and talking to people who kind of perpetrate or commit these kind of crime who are involved in this kind of activity of assessment well that it's it's disgusting and cowardly Behavior because if even if you you're discharging a firearm and a person you're trying to hit when you have a crowd like this innocent people are going to be caught up in the Mayhem and that's what happened today I don't have that information but I can tell you the gun we had to the responding officers who were on the perimeter blocking traffic as they are now they were on scene within a few within less than 45 seconds I would say and the gunfire had stopped so the initial officers indicated there was a barrage of gunfire but it was over relatively quickly the victims that were struck were they standing on the sidewalk just outside the theater all the victims were outside the theater and we believe in all the gunfire took place outside the theater I can tell you that Monroe Park as I mentioned earlier was full of hundreds of people celebrating the day taking photographs with their loved ones when gunfire rang out and a crowd of people ran in every direction as you can expect or on the sidewalk of your computer I'm not exactly sure where they were struck but they were definitely outside somewhere somewhere in Monroe park somewhere further along the sidewalk I believe but I'm not exactly sure operation well I think we you know we we need to work on this we obviously there's there's too many people in our city who've been shot so right now this will be as of this will be our 33rd murder with the two individuals today and um too many people are shot and wounded so that's why we've we've started that that planning we have a planning meeting tomorrow with our partners for Operation Safe summer we're going to redouble our efforts and and do our best to keep our community safe at this point I'm not prepared to confirm that gang related I don't believe so I believe that the individuals some of them knew each other at this point I'm going to go ahead and stop I appreciate everyone's patience today we will have more to say with the mayor tomorrow so we will be sending out that information shortly to all and thank you

Channel: FOX 5 Washington DC

Views: 35,979

Keywords: news, gun violence, mass shooting, true crime

Id: BQ-VBA_vmEU

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 07 2023