Republicans Never Ending War Against America
Sweet 16 birthday party shooting that left 4 dead and dozens injured.
After a Sweet 16 birthday celebration was shattered by a shooting over the weekend that left four people dead and at least 28 others injured, investigators in Dadeville, Alabama, are still working to determine what caused the chaos.
Authorities have yet to release details on a suspect or possible motive and have not revealed what led up to the shooting, which began to ring out around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said.
Among those killed was the birthday girl’s brother, Philstavious Dowdell, a talented football player beloved by the community, according to Ben Hayes, chaplain of Dadeville High School’s football team, and Keenan Cooper, who was DJing at the party when the gunfire broke out.
Just weeks before the shooting, assistant football coach Michael Taylor said Dowdell told him, “If anything ever happened to me, even when I go to college, take care of my two sisters.”
Keke Smith, a high school senior, was also killed, according to Taylor and Amy Jackson, who said she is Smith’s cousin.
The shooting left dozens of partygoers with “a wide variety of injuries” and some were still in critical condition as of Sunday afternoon, Sgt. Jeremy J. Burkett with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said.
Hayes, who is also a church pastor and chaplain for the Dadeville Police Department, spent Saturday night at a hospital where several victims were taken and consoled students and families who had congregated there.
“It’s a very close, tight knit community. Everybody knows everybody. That’s why this is so difficult.” He added, “I knew these kids personally, most people did.”
Dadeville city council member Teneeshia Goodman-Johnson told a CNN affiliate that supporting students as they grieve should be the community’s top focus.
“Their physical, their mental, their emotional health is my priority right now,” Johnson told affiliate WAKA. “We need to make sure that they are okay.”
In the meantime, investigators continue to gather information about the shooting, Burkett said.
“We have been getting continuous updates throughout the day and we are absolutely trying to confirm and understand everyone that was in the venue there,” he said.
The sergeant also encouraged anyone with information about the incident to reach out to inform law enforcement. “I cannot stress this enough, we absolutely need you to share it,” Burkett said.
The Dadeville incident came less than two hours after reports came in of a shooting at a crowded park in Louisville, Kentucky, in which two people were killed and four others were wounded. After this weekend’s violence, there have been more than 160 mass shootings so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, marking more mass shootings than there have been days in the year.
The archive, like CNN, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people are shot, excluding the shooter.
President Joe Biden responded to the Dadeville and Louisville shootings in a statement Sunday, saying he is praying for the victims’ families and reiterating his call for Congress to reach an agreement of gun control legislation.
“What has our nation come to when children cannot attend a birthday party without fear? When parents have to worry every time their kids walk out the door to school, to the movie theater, or to the park?” Biden said.
More “Standing Your Ground” in Missouri:
“We are here because an injustice has happened," voices rang out as a march began in Kansas City for Ralph Yarl, quoted KMBC's Peyton Headlee on Twitter.
The Kansas Defender reported that a 16-year-old was shot in the head by a white man, and as he lay bleeding, the man shot him in the head again. Yarl ended up at the door accidently when he was asked to go pick up his sibling at a friend's house. The house where he was supposed to go was on NE 115th Terrace. Yarl went to NE 115th Street instead.
“This was not an ‘error’; this was a hate crime. You don’t shoot a child in the head because he rang your doorbell. The fact that the police said it was an ‘error’ is why America is the way it is,” Dr. Faith Spoonmore, Yarl's aunt, told the Defender.
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence cites Missouri's "stand your ground" laws that "remove the duty to retreat before using deadly force in defense of self or others in any place a person has a right to be."
Where the man might be in trouble is that there was no threat when he shot the boy a second time.
The Defender said that the man was taken to the police headquarters briefly to give a statement and was then released without charging him.
“This man intended to kill an innocent child simply because he rang the doorbell of the wrong house," said Dr. Spoonmore. "He looked him in the face and shot him… and the individual is free to go about his day as if he did a great deed. While my nephew Ralph Yarl is a great kid, an intelligent kid, a black boy is left with so many broken pieces.”
The family is asking for help with the legal battle they're about to take on at GoFundMe.
The crowd amassed outside the shooter's home.
Once again, we can thank ex-president tRump and republiCONs for this devastation.
