BULLETS FLYING

MASSACRE: At Least 2 Shooters Kill Six, Wound More in Sacramento

Police believe multiple shooters opened fire as a fight broke out among people leaving local bars at closing time.

Multiple shooters killed at least six people and injured 12 after opening fire into a crowd of brawling bar patrons early on Sunday morning in downtown Sacramento, California.

Just after the 2 a.m. closing time, Sacramento police said they responded to a report of gunfire breaking out amid a massive fistfight on the corner of 10th Street and K Street. Authorities have said they believe that at least two people fired shots into the crowd.

The shooters were still at large more than 18 hours after the incident. “We’re asking for the public’s help in helping us to identify the suspects in this,” Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester said, the Associated Press reported.

Video posted on social media shows terrified people running away from the scene against a backdrop of rapid gunfire, according to ABC 10.

A witness staying in a nearby hotel told the AP that she had gone to her window after hearing the sound of gunshots. Kelsey Schar said she spotted flashes in the dark and “a guy running and just shooting.”

Pamela Harris told Reuters that her daughter called to say that her son, Sergio, 38, had been killed, and she had come to the scene to try to get confirmation.

“She said he was dead. I just collapsed,” Harris said. “I cannot leave here now until I know what's going on. I'm not going anywhere. It seems like a dream.”

“This morning our city has a broken heart,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said at a Sunday press conference. Officials did not yet know all the facts, he explained, promising later that the city would work to further crack down on gun violence as it investigated the shooting.

“Let’s get back to that issue which is at the core of this: In what sane society do we allow the proliferation of assault weapons in the way that we see being used indiscriminately, not just in Sacramento, but in other parts of the country?” he asked. “This is a sickness. It is a sickness in our country. It is a sickness in our culture.”

Mills College professor Keli Dailey told The Daily Beast she had a fitful night of sleep at the Citizen Hotel nearby when she was woken up by the “unmistakable” sound of gunshots.

Once she looked out her window, she saw scores of men and women running in different directions, with some people kneeling near a woman in white on her back. They were desperately trying to get her help, Dailey said, with one man chasing after an ambulance that drove past her.

“It was a scene of screaming, chaos,” Dailey told The Daily Beast. “People were angry.”

Dailey said she eventually left the hotel around 2:15 a.m. to check out the scene on the ground and found men and women screaming into their phones over lost loved ones, others making threats, and some people just seeking to get into their cars and drive home.

“You could not figure out where anything was occurring. There was no center to the chaos, and yet, a lot of people were still processing it,” she said. “Other people were saying, ‘I just witnessed a killing.’”

Dailey said she did not know if she would feel safe returning to Sacramento again. A Texas native who lives in San Francisco, she said she ventures to the city a few weekends a year to relax, but after witnessing the “pretty dismal scene” Sunday, she felt conflicted.

“Is there a place that’s immune to a senseless act of violence?” she said. “I don’t know about it, but it is a tragedy to have been so near to a number of people who have been in a tragic event.”