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ORANGE, Calif .– Four people, including a child, were killed in an office building shootout in Southern California on Wednesday, authorities said, bringing nearly a deadly month devastated by a string of high-profile cases armed violence. .
The gunfire occurred around 5:30 p.m. in Orange, Calif., About 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, according to police, who said a fifth victim, a female, had been hospitalized in a state critical with a gunshot wound.
A suspect was also hospitalized in critical condition with a gunshot wound, authorities said. They added that it was not yet known whether the injury was self-inflicted.
What led to the shooting was not immediately clear and further details on the victims and the suspect were not available from authorities. They said a gun was found at the scene, which covered two floors and a courtyard of the building.
Lt. Jennifer Amat, spokesperson for the Orange Police Department, told a press conference Wednesday night that police responded in the 202 West Lincoln Avenue neighborhood near Glassell Street after reports of fire.
When police arrived, the gunfire was still in progress and police found several casualties, police said.
Emma Soto, 26, who lives in an apartment near the building, was doing laundry when she said she heard seven to ten gunshots.
“It sounded like a popping noise,” she says. “It didn’t really sound like what you would imagine, like in the movies. We hear about all these shootings, so I just thought, “Another shootout”. But we never imagined it would be so close to us.
Almost immediately after hearing the shots, Ms Soto said, several police vehicles stopped. She saw the officers exit the vehicles with their weapons in hand. Officers ran towards the building, she said.
The neighborhood is generally quiet and peaceful, and it is largely Hispanic, said Ms. Soto, manager of a nearby big box store. “It’s scary,” she said of the shooting.
Hope Orozco, 27, was with her 3-year-old son at a neighbor’s house when she said she heard the shots. She said her son enjoys watching his neighbor’s kids play Call of Duty, the popular fighting video game. At first, she says, she confused the hustle and bustle outside with the sounds of the game.
“I was like, ‘Wait a minute, is this TV?’” Ms. Orozco said. She realized it was real after noticing that all the players were hooked up to headsets.
Hector Gomez and Edgar Gonzalez work in a roofing company located on the first floor of the building where the shooting took place. The two men, along with residents who were at the scene Wednesday night, said they believed the shooting took place in a real estate office on the second floor. The windows in the office looked like they had been torn off.
Mr Gomez said the woman who ran the office sold mobile homes and often brought her son into the building with her.
“He’s a cute little boy,” Mr. Gomez said.
Both men said they were convinced the woman and her son were among the victims. The woman’s SUV was still in the parking lot as police conducted their investigation late that evening.
Mr. Gomez and Mr. Gonzalez usually leave the office around 5:30 p.m. when the shooting took place. Wednesday they left early. They returned after hearing about the shooting from their boss.
“It could have been us,” Gomez said. “I don’t mean that, but it probably would’ve been us. Because we are always the last here.
Orange is a city of 139,000 within 10 km of Disneyland. Late Wednesday evening, a dozen police and fire vehicles blocked Main Lincoln Avenue. The commercial squat building where the shooting took place is mostly surrounded by houses and apartment buildings.
Orange’s low-rise beige building is home to several businesses, including a property management company, an insurance agency and a consulting firm.
The owner of a nearby auto repair shop, who asked not to be named, said he heard four gunshots. Minutes later, he said, police surrounded the building.
He heard at least 10 more gunshots after that, he said, although he still doesn’t know exactly what happened.
“It was weird having something like that next to it,” he says. “We had never heard anything like it before.”
Lieutenant Amat called the shooting a “tragedy for the victims, their families, our community and our police service.” She said Wednesday’s shooting was the worst homicide in Orange in a Rampage in 1997 in a maintenance site of Caltrans, in which a gunman killed four people and was later killed by police in a shootout.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Twitter that he was shaken by the shooting.
“Horrible and heartbreaking,” he says. “Our hearts are with the families affected by this terrible tragedy tonight.”
Representative Katie Porter, a Democrat whose district includes part of Orange, expressed sadness over Twitter on set.
“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 learn more,” he said. she declared. “My team and I will continue to monitor the situation closely.”
In March, two mass shootings – one in Atlanta and the other in Boulder, Colorado – took place within a week. In Atlanta on March 16, an armed man shot and killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent, in three spas. On March 22, a man stormed a grocery store in Boulder and killed 10 people.
Until the Atlanta shooting, it had been a year since there had been a full-scale shooting in a public place, according to the Violence Project.
Louis Keene reported from Orange, Calif., Neil Vigdor from Greenwich, Connecticut, and Jacey Fortin from New York. Manny Fernandez contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
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