Washington:
Police said Wednesday they arrested two teenagers and charged them with murder in connection with a shooting at a Sweet 16 birthday party in a small Alabama town that left four people dead and 32 injured.
The weekend’s violence in the tight-knit community of Dadeville in the US South was one of several mass shootings in recent days to plague a country that is awash in firearms and shootings of tens of thousands each year. dies from
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) identified the suspects, who were arrested late Tuesday after a three-day investigation and manhunt, as Ty Rick McCullough, 17, and Travis McCullough, 16, and said they were charged with “reckless murder.” He was charged with four counts of
The suspects are from Tuskegee, a town about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Dadeville.
District Attorney Mike Seagrest said the pair would be prosecuted as adults, despite being minors, noting that four of the hospitalized victims were in serious condition.
“We’re going to make sure that justice is served to every one of those victims, not just the deceased,” Seagrest told reporters.
State and local officials had been facing criticism from the public for several days for failing to release key details about the violence, including whether any suspects were out in the open, or had been hit by gunfire or was injured.
Authorities still have no details on a possible motive for the shooters for the deadly violence, whose dozens of victims were mostly in their teens.
Following the arrests, ALEA Sergeant Jeremy Burkett urged members of the public present at the party at a rented dance studio in Dadeville to have the “personal courage” to tell police what they saw.
Among those killed was 18-year-old Philstavius Dowdell, whose sister was celebrating her 16th birthday on Saturday.
Dowdell was an accomplished high school athlete who received a scholarship to play football at Jacksonville State University.
The party turned violent when the birthday girl’s mother told guests she had learned the men were armed and asked them to leave, according to local media reports.
The epidemic of gun violence in America is showing no signs of abating. The Alabama shooting comes days after a bank employee in Kentucky killed five people at his workplace.
There have also been a series of shootings in which people were accidentally shot after ringing the wrong doorbell, coming to the wrong house, or entering the wrong parked car.
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