Two Mass Shootings in A Matter of Days
A school shooting followed by a shooting at a football party took place in California over the past week.
Last Thursday, November 14th, a student at Saugus High School entered the quad of the school with a .45 caliber pistol and opened fire on his classmates. The shooter took the lives of two classmates, Grace Anne Muehlberger, 15, and Dominic Blackwell, 14, and injured three more students before attempting to take his own life.
This attack lasted only 16 seconds.
A student of the high school, Madi Roeschke, told CNN the attack “didn’t surprise her.”
“Of course it was very hard, and a traumatic experience. But with the state of America right now, with gun control not being strict enough, with kids being able to access guns so easily, it didn’t surprise me,” she said.
The shooter was one of the students that were transported to the hospital following the attack. He was pronounced dead the next day.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva was quoted on CNN saying, “There’s nothing really that stands out (with the suspect). He wasn’t a loner. Wasn’t socially awkward. Was involved in student activities. Student athlete.”
The motive for the shooting still remains unknown.
About 200 miles north of Saugus High School and only a few days later, two gunmen opened fire at a backyard football party in Fresno, California.
The gunmen sneaked into the backyard where they started shooting at the group of sixteen men who were watching the Sunday Night Football game. About fifteen more people, including children, were inside the home when they started seeing flashes of light from the gun.
Four men, who CNN identified as, Xy Lee, 23, Phia Vang, 31, Kou Xiong, 38, and Kalaxang Thao, 40, were pronounced dead that night. Six other men aged between 28 and 36 were treated at a local hospital for non-life threatening gunshot wounds.
The Fresno Police Department appears to believe that this attack was gang-related and wasn’t an accident, according to CNN.
The suspects have not yet been identified or captured.
In the wake of these tragic events, CBS News published an article titled: “There have been more mass shootings than days this year”
According to the Gun Violence Archive, a mass shooting can be identified as any incident where at least four people were shot, excluding the shooter.
This article states that as of November 17th, which is the 321st day of the year, there have been 369 mass shootings in the U.S.
Following 2016, 2019 has the second-highest amount of mass shootings in a year since the Gun Violence Archive started keeping a record.
