In a press conference on Monday evening, Police ChiefSammy L. Taylor Jr.said the incident happened around 3:43 p.m. earlier that day.
A dark blue Nissan four-door sedan pulled up on the 900 block of North Iowa Avenue and four males “started firing” out of each window of the vehicle before speeding away.
Taylor saidpolice arrived on the scenewithin a minute and found three injured men between the ages of 20 and 35, who were immediately transported to the hospital.
Two men were in critical condition as of Monday night, with one man sustaining injuries from a shot to the face and another sustaining injuries from a shot to the abdomen. Eight other victims faced non-life-threatening injuries from the shooting.
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“This is something that doesn’t happen to Lakeland,” Taylor said in the press conference. “I’ve been here 30 to 40 years, and I can tell you I’ve never worked an event where this many people have been shot at one time ever.”
Police say they are still working on locating the car and suspects. They have sinceoffered a reward of up to $5,000in coordination with Heartland Crimestoppers for any information that could lead to an arrest.
Despite the suspects still being at large, Taylor noted that police “don’t believe there’s any reason that the public would need to be concerned right now.”
“We think that the individuals in the car shot at who they wanted to shoot,” Taylor said, adding that they had reason to believe “this was a targeted event” and “not a random act.”
Lakeland Police car.FOX 35 Orlando/YouTube
Police also found “a quantity of marijuana” at the scene of the crime, which Taylor said “would indicate obviously there was narcotic sales or sales of marijuana going on at the time.”
He added that they were investigating whether or not this was connected to the shooting.
There have been 51 mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year, according to theGun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that tracks incident reports from across the U.S.
source: people.com
