US rocked by 3 mass shootings during Easter weekend
- Two dead, at least 31 injured in two shootings in South Carolina, another in Pittsburgh
- Three Easter mass shootings are in addition to other US gun violence in recent days
Authorities in the US state of South Carolina were investigating a shooting at a nightclub that wounded at least nine people. It was the second mass shooting in the state and the third in the United States during the Easter holiday weekend.
The shootings in South Carolina and one in Pittsburgh, in which two minors were killed early Sunday, also left at least 31 people wounded.
No one was reported killed in the violence at Cara’s Lounge in Hampton County, roughly 130km (80 miles) west of Charleston, according to South Carolina’s State Law Enforcement Division, which is investigating the shooting.
In Pittsburgh, two male youths were killed and at least eight people wounded when shots were fired during a party at a short-term rental property. The “vast majority” of the hundreds of people at the party were underage, the city’s Police Chief Scott Schubert said. Investigators believe there were multiple shooters, and Schubert said police were processing evidence at as many as eight separate crime scenes spanning a few blocks around the rental home.
The two shootings come just a day after gunfire erupted at a busy mall in the South Carolina state capital of Columbia, about 145km north of Sunday’s nightclub shooting. Nine people were shot, and five people sustained other kinds of injuries while trying to flee the scene at the Columbiana Centre, Columbia Police Chief W.H. “Skip” Holbrook said on Saturday. The victims ranged in age from 15 to 73. None faced life-threatening injuries.
“We don’t believe this was random,” Holbrook said. “We believe they knew each other and something led to the gunfire.”