Four killed at ‘Sweet 16’ shooting in US state of Alabama | Crime News

Mass shooting at teenager’s birthday party is the third mass shooting in the US South in as many weeks.

At least four people have been killed and 28 wounded in a shooting at a teenager’s birthday party in the US state of Alabama.

Authorities said the shooting occurred during a “Sweet 16” birthday celebration at a dance studio in the town of Dadeville, about 92km (57 miles) northeast of Montgomery, shortly after 10:30pm on Saturday (03:30 GMT Sunday)

The victims include a high school senior who was celebrating his sister’s 16th birthday, the student’s grandmother Annette Allen told the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper.

The newspaper said the slain teenager had been set to graduate within weeks and planned to attend Jacksonville State University on a football scholarship.

Officials said on Sunday that there was no longer a threat to the general public but did not indicate whether a suspect had been arrested or killed.

“We’ve got to have information from the community,” Sergeant Jeremy Burkett of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said during a Sunday evening news conference.

Burkett and other law enforcement officials declined to provide details on the perpetrator or any possible motives.

“We’re going to continue to work in a very methodical way to go through this scene, to look at the facts, and ensure that justice is brought to bear for the families,” Burkett added.

The shooting is the third high-profile outbreak of gun violence in as many weeks in southern US states, after other mass shootings in Tennessee and Kentucky.

US President Joe Biden described the latest violence as “outrageous and unacceptable” and reiterated calls for Congress to pass gun control measures, including background checks for all gun sales and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

“What has our nation come to when children cannot attend a birthday party without fear?” Biden said in a statement.

“When parents have to worry every time their kids walk out the door to school, to the movie theatre, or to the park?”

The mass shooting in Dadeville comes less than a week after a bank employee killed five colleagues and wounded nine other people at his workplace in Louisville, Kentucky. Last month, a former student of a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, shot dead three 9-year-olds and three staff members.

The US has seen more than 163 mass shootings – defined as a shooting in which four or more people are killed or wounded, excluding the attacker – so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Efforts to pass gun control legislation have been repeatedly frustrated due to opposition from Republicans, who have cast themselves as defenders of the US Constitution’s right to bear arms.