Five dead, including two police officers, after another shooting in the United States

Five people died in the United States, including two policemen and the gunman, in a fatal shootingThe Watauga County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina said Thursday.

Two officers were dispatched to a house near Boone on Wednesday morning, whose occupants had not reported to work and were not answering the phone, it was explained in a press release sent to the agency AFP.

After noticing that there were several vehicles, the officers entered the house, where they were shot.

The reinforcements managed to save one of the agents, Chris ward, who was evacuated by helicopter but nevertheless died in hospital. Your colleague, Logan fox, died at the scene.

Two policemen and a gendarme were attacked while trying to come to his aid. One of them was hit but protected by his team, they detailed in the sheriff’s office.

The assailant continued to shoot at the police at times, which required the presence of 15 agents and took 13 hours to control the situation. Residents of the area had to be evacuated or stay at home.

“The suspect who killed the two policemen is also suspected of having killed two civilians in the house,” the statement said. Sheriff Len Hagaman told the local network WSOC that the perpetrator was dead and that the other two victims were his mother and stepfather.

In the United States, where guns are rife and controversial due to numerous mass shootings, an average of 50 police officers are killed on duty each year.

According to CNN, based on data from the NGO Gun Violence Archive, at least 148 mass shootings took place in the United States in 2021. The chain considers a mass shooting to be such if four or more people are shot, wounded or killed, not counting the gunman. The same criterion is used by the aforementioned NGO.

The last episode of a similar magnitude occurred on April 15 in the city of Indianapolis, when Eight people were killed and several others were injured after a former FedEx employee opened fire on a company’s premises before killing himself..

Four of the dead were followers of the South Asian Sikh religion, a Sikh organization confirmed, raising questions as to whether the attacker was racially or ethnically motivated.

President Joe Biden on April 8 announced half a dozen executive orders under which seeks to combat the proliferation of armed violence which it has called “epidemic and international disgrace”.

He also called on lawmakers to take tougher measures in his message to the plenary chamber on Wednesday: “I don’t want to be confronted, but we need more Republicans in the Senate to join the overwhelming majority of their fellow Democrats for fill in the gaps and require a background check to purchase firearms», He expressed.

In this sense, the president in turn called for a ban on the purchase by civilians of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. “Don’t tell me it can’t be done. We have done this in the past and it has workedHe said, referring to a 10-year ban passed in 1994 during Bill Clinton’s first term.

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