Two people are dead, nine other people have been shot and a police officer has been hit by a car across multiple crime scenes at Virginia Beach in the US.
Virginia Beach Police Chief Paul Neudigate described it as a “very chaotic incident” that first began about 11pm local time (2pm AEDT).
“Numerous shots were fired (and) hit approximately eight victims, give or take, from this location,” Chief Neudigate told local media.
“While officers were actively working that crime scene, we had additional shots that were fired. That resulted in an individual being confronted by a uniformed Virginia Beach police officer … resulting in a police intervention shooting.
“That individual is deceased.
“We also have a second deceased individual that was not part of the police intervention shooting.
“We don’t believe was part of the original shooting.”
A police officer was also hit by a car and has non-life-threatening injuries described as “bumps and scrapes”.
Chief Neudigate said all the violent incidents occurred outdoors and everything was currently stable.
“We have several people … that are in our custody right now, what their involvement in this incident is, we don’t know yet,” he said.
A large police presence remains.
It follows two recent mass shootings in the US, which had experienced a lull in such gun violence during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
He had bought his assault rifle six days earlier.
The president suggested he would take executive action to bypass Congress in a bid to tighten America’s notoriously slack gun regulations.
Despite gun control being massively popular in the United States, opposition from Republican legislators had stopped any reform in its tracks.
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