One teenager was killed and multiple people, including a D.C. Metropolitan Police officer, were shot at a Juneteenth event near the 14th Street Corridor on Sunday evening, authorities confirmed.
Officials believe only one person was responsible for the shooting and are still searching for a suspect. It’s not entirely clear whether they have identified a person of interest.
Law enforcement responded to the area of 14th and U Streets in Northwest D.C. after receiving reports of shots fired, with MPD officials confirming in a tweet that “multiple people” had been injured. Among those injured was an officer who was shot in the leg. The officer was transported to a local hospital and is in stable condition, according to the D.C. Police Union.
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Officers initially responded to the area to diffuse two separate “incidents” that caused attendees to scatter from the area earlier in the evening, Police Chief Robert Contee told reporters. Officials then began to shut the event down “because it appeared that the event was unsafe at this point,” he said, noting that several people had been injured while trying to get away from the area.
Shortly after officers and other emergency personnel began clearing people out of the crowded intersection to treat people who had been injured, another incident occurred that left four people shot. Contee said the four individuals were two adults, one 15-year-old boy, and one police officer. The teenager later died of his injuries.
Contee said none of the officers present on the scene fired any shots during the incident.
Attendees of the Juneteenth event, called “Moechella,” began posting on social media in the early evening hours about being caught in a stampede, with scores of Twitter users alleging they had been trampled.
Shortly after, videos on social media showed the packed cross street erupt in chaos after gunshots rang out.
Contee said that organizers for the event did not have a permit to take over the popular intersection of the trendy D.C. neighborhood, something he condemned and vowed accountability for.
“We do not want unpermitted events in our city,” the police chief said. “Unfortunately, things like this can happen when you have the wrong mix of people or people who introduce firearms into a situation.”
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D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who was also at the press conference, voiced her dissatisfaction that such an event could take place without “proper planning.”
“We have a child who was killed today at an event that did not have any proper planning for the number of people who were here,” she said. “With guns involved and with our police managing a crowd on-site, somebody used a gun. And a child is dead.”
