Twelve people were hurt, six of them children, when gunfire broke out near Florida A&M’s stadium as homecoming crowds headed home Saturday night. A 15-year-old has been charged.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Homecoming is supposed to be the one weekend everybody comes back. Grandmothers in orange and green. Alumni who haven’t seen each other in twenty years. Kids on shoulders watching the band.
Saturday night, it ended in gunfire.
Twelve people were hurt in a shooting near Perry and Manatee streets, behind Florida A&M University’s Bragg Memorial Stadium, around 8 p.m. as crowds left the homecoming celebration, according to News4JAX. Eleven were shot. A twelfth hurt an ankle running from the gunfire. Six of the injured are children, including an 11-year-old.
By Sunday, five had been released from the hospital and six were still being treated, one in critical condition, CBS News reported. No one was killed.
What police say
A fight broke out first, police said, among people who knew each other. Then somebody started shooting. None of the people hit appear to have been the intended targets.
A 15-year-old was arrested and charged with multiple counts of attempted murder and possession of a firearm by a delinquent, according to CBS News. Police said more arrests are possible. The Sun-Reporter does not name minors charged with crimes.
“What should have been a weekend of celebration in our community instead became a night of fear and violence,” Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said.
FAMU President Marva Johnson said she shares in the “outrage and profound sadness at the senseless and despicable shooting.” The university said the shooting happened near campus and that the campus remained safe.
Rattlers head football coach Quinn Gray put it plainest.
“No one should leave our celebration in an ambulance,” he wrote, “and no child should ever be caught in gunfire.”
Why it lands here
Homecoming at a historically Black college is a family reunion for the whole Black diaspora, and the Bay Area sends its share. Alumni, parents of students, kids who’ve already got their acceptance letters in mind. When something like this happens in Tallahassee, it happens to people we know.
Police are asking anyone with information or video to contact the Tallahassee Police Department.
Sources: CBS News and News4JAX. Photo: Bragg Memorial Stadium at Florida A&M University. Photo by Michael Rivera via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Based on reporting by San Francisco Sun Reporter.
