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Several people have been killed and dozens more injured in separate shootings across the United States on Friday night and early Saturday, just days after President Joe Biden met with a group of law enforcement officials. laws, community groups, and state and local leaders to address a nationwide wave of violent crime.
The incidents in Houston, Philadelphia, Portland, Oregon, Sacramento, California and Washington, DC, come amid a year-long increase in gun violence nationwide and record gun sales.
Authorities investigating three of the attacks said multiple guns or shooters were involved.
Biden addressed the rise in violent crime on Monday by encouraging communities to use $ 350 billion of public funds included in the Covid-19 relief plan to hire officers and pay for crime prevention.
“We recognize that we must unite to take the primary responsibility for a democracy and to ensure our mutual security,” he said.
In Washington, DC, a 6-year-old girl was killed in an attack Friday night that also injured three men and two women, police said.
“There is still too much gun violence perpetuated in this city, and too many children are injured,” Ashan Benedict, deputy executive chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, said from the crime scene overnight.
Two men were killed and four victims were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries during Friday night’s violence in the Old Sacramento tourist district in Sacramento, Calif., Officials said.
“It is believed that there was some sort of altercation between two groups before the shooting and several firearms were recovered from the scene,” the Sacramento Police Department said in a statement.
In Portland, Oregon, a woman was killed and six others sustained non-life threatening injuries in a shootout in the downtown area on Saturday morning, police said. The death toll may rise as investigators check hospitals for those who may have arrived by private transport, officials said.
Shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday in Philadelphia, gunfire left a 27-year-old man dead in the city’s East Falls neighborhood, according to NBC Philadelphia.
The shooting was one of multiple incidents in the city from Friday night to Saturday morning, the news station reported.
There was an altercation between two men in the city’s Queen Village area which left one dead, and police said authorities received reports of six other gunshot victims, including a 16-year-old boy. who was shot in the abdomen and registered in critical condition at a hospital.
The Houston Galleria was the site of an attack Friday night that injured a man who was shot in the leg, authorities said. The suspected gunman fled to a parking lot, where an officer on leave engaged in a shootout with the man, according to Houston Police Chief Troy Finner.
The officer, an employee of the department for 5 years, was not injured, the chief said. It was not clear whether the alleged gunman, who had fled, had been hit. He was still at large, Finner said.
“It’s a sign of the times,” said the chef. “We just have to, as a city, focus on these violent criminals – idiots. We have families in the mall. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Jay varela and Juliet Arcodia contributed.
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