At least two people have been killed and more than 20 were wounded when three people started shooting outside of a Florida banquet hall early Sunday morning, CNN reports.
Miami-Dade Police Department Director Alfredo Ramirez III said a white Nissan Pathfinder pulled up to El Mula Banquet Hall in Hialeah shortly after midnight. The assailants “stepped out of the vehicle with assault rifles and handguns and started firing indiscriminately into the crowd.” Those who were injured were taken to various hospitals in the area, with at least one currently in critical condition.
El Mula Banquet Hall was rented out Saturday night for a concert.
“They said that some guys, three guys that they noticed … they just started shooting … for whatever reason, we don’t know,” Angelica Green said, relaying to reporters what her son and nephew observed during the banquet hall shooting. Her son is in stable condition after undergoing surgery to address an abdominal gunshot wound, while the outlook on the nephew is also encouraging despite him being shot three times in the leg and once in the abdomen.
Police are asking for the public’s help in determining who was behind this heinous attack. Meanwhile, Marcus Lemonis, star of the CNBC show The Profit, is offering a $100,000 reward for information that would lead to a conviction.
Ramirez’s remarks about the banquet hall shooting touch on a growing issue impacting various parts of Florida. “This is a despicable act of gun violence, a cowardly act,” he said, per the Miami Herald. “This type of gun violence has to stop. Every weekend it is the same thing. This is targeted, this is definitely not random.”
Miami police were called Friday night to respond to a drive-by shooting in the neighborhood of Wynwood, where one person was fatally shot, and six others were wounded. The scene was described as a “war zone” as witnesses said they heard about 60 gunshots go off.
