Eight people, including a 12-year-old girl, were injured in two separate back-to-back shootings Friday night in Washington, D.C., police said.
No one died in the shootings, which Metropolitan Police Department officials said are believed to be connected.
At about 10 p.m. Friday, police responded to reports of shots fired on the city’s southeast side, where officers found seven men with gunshot wounds, Assistant Chief of Patrol Services South Andre Wright said at a news conference. None of their injuries were life-threatening, and most of the victims took themselves to hospitals.
“There was some chaos, obviously, because of the number of victims and the loved ones,” he said.
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Police then received a report of a shooting nearby, where they found a 12-year-old girl with “a gunshot wound to her lower extremities,” Wright said. The girl is in stable condition and her injury was not life-threatening, he added.
Multiple shell casings were found at both scenes, Wright said.
Wright asked for the public’s help as investigators search for a black Sedan, or possibly a Mercedes, that witnesses say “drove through the block and indiscriminately fired upon individuals.”
Because of the proximity of the two scenes and the short time frame, Wright said the shootings are believed to be connected.
Investigators are still searching for a motive in the shooting and have yet to determine if anyone was specifically targeted, Wright said.
“It’s a beautiful night. There were folks who were hanging out here and there were folks who were moving about on the 2nd Street scene,” Wright said. “And for some reason you have some people who think that it was okay to fire a firearm at multiple individuals at two different scenes. And we’re not going to let that stand.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
USA TODAY
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