Five people, including a six-year-old child, have been wounded in a shooting during a parade in Louisiana, sending people in the crowd fleeing for cover, authorities say.
The shooting occurred shortly after the midday start of the Mardi Gras in the Country parade in Clinton, East Feliciana sheriff Jeff Travis told reporters.
Travis said three people in the area who had firearms were taken into custody but that it wasn’t clear whether they were involved in the shooting.
The Louisiana governor, Jeff Landry, reacted to the shooting in a post on X, calling it “absolutely horrific and unacceptable” and urging people to pray for the victims.
Details about them and their conditions weren’t immediately released. But chief criminal deputy Bill Cox from the sheriff’s office told The Advocate that everyone was expected to survive.
The sheriff’s office asked for anyone with photos or video of the shooting or nearby areas to share those with investigators.
The local news outlet WBRZ reported that the Louisiana state police has taken over the investigation.
Clinton has a population of about 1,300 people. It is part of the metropolitan area surrounding Louisiana’s capital city, Baton Rouge.
At the time of the shooting in Clinton on Saturday, there had been at least 24 mass shootings in the US so far in the year, according to the nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive.
The archive defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are wounded or killed.
Constantly high rates of mass shootings in the US have led many to call on Congress to enact more meaningful gun control measures. But Congress over the years has been unwilling or unable to heed such calls.
With Associated Press
