VIENNA, Georgia (AP) — Law enforcement officials are still working to determine just what happened when a chaotic homecoming party spanning a four-block radius of a southern Georgia town erupted in gunfire early Sunday, leaving two people dead and nearly three dozen others injured.
Dooly County Sheriff Craig Peavy identified the two people killed as 21-year-old Jaquevion Jackson of Cordele and 23-year-old Macaleb Jackson of Hawkinsville, Georgia.
Some
of the three dozen injured had gunshot wounds, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Chris Hosey said Sunday evening, but he could not provide a number.
“We’re still trying to work through that,” Hosey said during a news conference Sunday evening.
No arrests have been made, and authorities gave no possible motive for the gunfire.
The injured ranged in age from 14 to 51, and they were taken to several regional hospitals, Peavy said. Some were in critical condition Sunday evening and others were stable, he said.
More than 1,000 people had gathered at the site, and more than 50 shots were fired in at least two locations about a block apart in Vienna, Peavy told WMAZ-TV. Vienna is a small, rural community about 130 miles (about 210 kilometers) south of Atlanta.
Deputies were near the scene when the shooting began, Peavy said, and after they arrived more gunfire erupted about a block away.
“We don’t know if it’s coming at us or someone else,” he said. “You just have to keep doing what you’re doing and hope you don’t get hit by gunfire.”
The incident took place over homecoming weekend for Dooly County High School.
Ashley Gee, 30, who lives in nearby Turner County and came to Vienna for the party, described to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution a constant barrage of gunfire, imitating the sound of rapid-fire shots.
“Like a machine gun,” she said. “One person ran, and everybody started running.”
The AJC said the party drew in people from other surrounding counties in south Georgia following a local high school football team’s victory at a homecoming game Friday night.
The shooting was not at a school-sponsored event, said Sherrod Willaford, superintendent of the Dooly County School System.
“We recognize that its impact may reach many of our students, families, and staff,” he said in a statement. Schools will open Monday, he said, but additional safety measures have been put in place. He did not specify what they are.
Peavy said the festivities began Friday night, and that it had “gone well” with “respect from the community” that evening as deputies patrolled the event.
But the party Saturday night was a “different story,” he said.
“We’re still working through the investigation to see what went wrong. But at large parties with people from different places, not just your locals, sometimes problems come,” he said.
"Our deputies were just about on the scene when it happened. They were at the end of each, most directions of where the block party was being held. But it was so many people. And it was just hard to figure out what was going on,” he said.
Peavy said the shooting was “a learning experience,” for his law enforcement team.
“There's just hardly no way to know how to operate when something like that happens on the scene," he said. He later continued, “We thought we'd been involved with a lot of stuff. But sometimes it surprises, and it was overwhelming.”
Vienna is about a 50-mile (80-kilometer) drive south on the Interstate 75 corridor from the central Georgia city of Macon, where authorities say 12 teens were wounded by gunfire during a confrontation between people at a birthday party the previous weekend a city park.
Deputies in Vienna found two people dead at the scene and multiple others who had been shot, officials said. Police also did not specify how many of the injured had been shot. The victims were taken to several hospitals for treatment, the GBI said.
Dooly County Coroner Brett Walls said the two men were pronounced dead at the scene with fatal gunshot wounds. He said multiple other people were also shot, calling the scene “horrific.”
Walls told the AJC that multiple people were struck by bullets and roughly a dozen others were hurt while trying to flee.
“This doesn’t — it’s not supposed to — happen in a small town like that. It’s something you hear on the news in bigger cities,” Walls told the newspaper, adding hospitals were flooded with the injured. “And even in bigger cities, you don’t hear that kind of a number.”
Authorities have not said whether any suspects are in custody or being sought. No motive has been given for the shooting.
Vienna Mayor Eddie Daniels said the shooting was about a block from his house and he “saw a lot of blue lights.” Daniels said he hadn’t spoken with law enforcement officials yet and had no details about what had happened.
Daniels said the city hadn’t issued any kind of permit for the block party and he didn’t know if it was a homecoming party.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Lydia Bullard declined to answer questions about the shooting, saying it was an ongoing investigation.
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Associated Press reporters Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, and Anthony Izaguirre in New York contributed to this report. Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin.
