The suspect in the slaying of five people Thursday in Raleigh, in the southeastern United States, including an off-duty police officer, has been taken into custody, local officials said.
The young man also injured several people, including another police officer.
The first shots rang out late in the afternoon (night in Lisbon), on a pedestrian route in the city of almost 500,000 inhabitants, the capital of North Carolina.
A large contingent of security forces was deployed to find the shooter, local media reported.
“I saw him walk past my house in the backyard. He had a long-barreled shotgun and was dressed in camouflage,” a witness told local station WRAL.
At a press conference, Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin lamented a “sad and tragic day” for the community.
“The suspect has been arrested,” the police wrote shortly after on the social network Twitter.
The United States is the scene of frequent shootings.
Faced with this scourge, “we have to do more,” said the mayor of the capital of North Carolina. “We must end this wanton violence in America. We must respond to gun violence. Our task is immense. And tonight our pain is immense,” he added.
Some 49,000 people were shot to death in the United States in 2021, up from 45,000 in 2020, which was already a record year. There are more than 130 deaths a day, more than half of which are suicides.
However, it is the mass shootings that stand out the most, while also illustrating the ideological divide between conservatives and progressives on how to prevent such tragedies.
Recent American history is replete with this kind of death, from businesses to churches, from supermarkets to nightclubs, from the streets to public transportation.
A massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018, sparked a national youth-led movement to demand stricter regulation of individual guns in the United States.
However, despite the mobilization of more than a million protesters, the US Congress has failed to adopt more ambitious legislation, with much criticism directed at congressmen who are under the influence of the powerful National Gun Association (NRA).
Millions of Americans consider the ability to own a firearm to be a fundamental constitutional right. The only recent legislative advances have been considered marginal, such as the generalization of criminal and psychiatric records prior to any acquisition of weapons.
Source: TSF
