4 dead, including a child, in a mass shooting in the Orange office complex

Four people, including a child, were killed Wednesday evening and a fifth person was injured in a mass shooting at an Orange office complex.

This is the third mass shooting in the United States in two weeks, after incidents at three Atlanta spas that killed eight people, including six Asian women, and a supermarket in Boulder, Colo., Which killed eight people, including six Asian women, and a supermarket in Boulder, Colo. killed 10.

Few details were immediately available on the victims or on a potential motive for the shooting.

Lt. Jennifer Amat, spokesperson for the Orange Police Department, said officers received a call around 5:30 p.m. of gunfire and responded to a business at 202 W. Lincoln Avenue in Orange. The address is a two-story beige office complex that contains a number of small businesses.

The officers encountered gunfire upon arrival and opened fire, Amat said. The shooter was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound and was listed in critical condition on Wednesday evening. It is not known whether the injury was self-inflicted or whether he was hit by police gunfire, Amat said.

There is currently no threat to the public, she added. A firearm was found at the scene.

The other injured, a woman, was listed in critical condition Wednesday evening.

Amat said the city had not “experienced such a situation since the Caltrans shooting in 1997”. In this incident, a former state employee opened fire with an assault rifle at a state maintenance job site, killing four people before dying in a shootout with police.

Orange, said Amat, “is generally calm.”

A row of large apartment complexes sits across from Lincoln Avenue.

18-year-old Nathan Zachary and his father were cooking fried chicken for dinner when, while browsing Instagram, he learned the news of the shooting. The two went out to see what was going on.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Zachary said, describing the neighborhood as “a safe and really safe area.”

He and his father stood on the sidewalk in flannel pajamas, trying to follow the movement of the many policemen moving around the scene.

“Hard to sleep,” Zachary said, “unless you know what’s going on.”

Camilo Akly, 28, was unable to pick up his younger brother, who was hanging out with a boyfriend in a house opposite the crime scene.

Thus, Wednesday evening, after having walked several blocks to join his brother, then having seen “one by one by one of the police cars stop, then heard the helicopter, then watch the firefighters rushing”, he said. ‘is stopped to try to understand the problem. situation.

“You think nothing could happen during your night out, and all of a sudden it changes really fast,” he says. “So much to watch out for these days.”

Other neighbors spread out on the sidewalk, filming the commotion with their cellphones and posting the footage on Facebook, speculating on the shooter’s motives and huddling near the TV cameras to hear the latest updates.

Representative Katie Porter wrote on Twitter: “I am deeply saddened by reports of a mass shooting in Orange County, and I continue to keep the victims and their loved ones in my thoughts as we continue to to learn more.

Porter’s district includes parts of Orange.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has coincided with a decline in mass shootings, which have fallen to their lowest level in nearly a decade, a recent spate of mass shootings has left many Americans in shock and at risk. seeking answers from legislators.

Robert Aaron Long, 21, faces murder charges after he allegedly attacked three spas in the Atlanta area on March 16. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent, which raised concerns that Long was motivated by anti-Asian hatred. The deaths of the women came amid a surge in anti-Asian hate crimes and other incidents of harassment, which increased over the past year.

In the shooting in Boulder, Ahmad Ali Aliwi Alissa, 21, was taken into custody and faces 10 counts of murder. Among the victims was a 51-year-old police officer, who was one of the first to respond to the scene. The other nine victims were between 20 and 65 years old.

It is a story of rupture; it will be updated.