A 20-year-old woman was killed and up to a dozen others injured in a mass shooting at a Mississippi club, on Sunday, prompting a dire warning.
“I think you’re taking a chance on your life right now if you go to these large events,” Clay County Sheriff Eddie Scott told WTVA-TV as authorities worked to piece together what had happened.
“Right now, law enforcement’s saying it’s not a good thing to do. It’s just the kind of society we’re living in,” he added. “We’re seeing too many cases of gun violence going on, and this just seems to be a trend.”
Details were scant Sunday night as investigators from the Clay County sheriff’s office pieced together what happened inside Club Oasis just outside the town of West Point, Miss. The locale of 10,000 is about 150 miles northeast of Jackson and 20 miles west of the Alabama border.
Most of the injured appeared to be innocent bystanders to a pre-planned attack, WTVA reported. Arriving deputies found the woman’s body and up to 12 people with wounds ranging from minor to serious, including a person who had been shot in the face, Scott told CNN. He said security guards had been on hand and checked people for weapons, so it wasn’t clear how a weapon made its way into the club where “several hundred” people were partying.
Most of the wounded were grazed and all were expected to be OK. Clay County Coroner Alvin Carter Jr. did not name the dead woman but said she was from nearby Columbus, Mississippi.
“What we do know is that a party was advertised and all these individuals came from other counties into our county,” Scott told CNN. “About 90% of the partygoers were from other counties.”
The suspected gunman bolted across the parking lot and a four-lane highway and fled into the woods, a security guard who tried to catch the killer told CNN. Scott said that the club’s security cameras were not working that night. No arrests had been made as of Sunday evening as the investigation continued.
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