Police in upstate New York are searching for multiple people in connection with a mass shooting that erupted at a park Sunday evening, leaving one person dead and at least six others injured.
Multiple gunshots were fired around 6:20 p.m. in Maplewood Park, in Rochester, where a large group of people were picnicking and enjoying the summer day, officials with the Rochester New York Police Department said.
It was not immediately clear what led up to the shooting or how many people fired shots, said Rochester police Capt. Greg Bello. The incident, he said, occurred “where everyone was out barbequing, having a good time.”
One person – “an adult in their 20s” – died as a result of the shooting, a second suffered life-threatening injuries and five others suffered “relatively minor injuries,” Bello said. He added it’s possible that other shooting victims have not yet been accounted for.
Rochester Police Chief David Smith said that the group had been at the park “all afternoon” and were picnicking when shots were fired. Smith said officers are “looking for more than one person” but that it was not clear if the involved shooter or shooters were part of the gathering or if they came from outside the park and fired shots.
Bello said that police are aware of several videos linked to the incident that are circulating on social media and asked for people to send those videos directly to investigators.
“Social media is great, online videos are great, online accounts of things that occurred are great, but unless we get those straight to our investigators where they can act on them quickly, that’s the best way we can work toward solving this case quickly,” he said at a Sunday evening news briefing at the scene.
Police are expected to provide more details about the incident at a news conference scheduled for Monday morning.
Maplewood Park spans two miles near the Genesee River, and includes a rose garden, gazebos, a playground and a picnic area. The park was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in the late 1880s and is a Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, according to the National Park Service.
Rochester, a city of over 200,000, sits on Lake Ontario and is located about 340 miles northwest of Manhattan.
There have been at least 314 mass shooting in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people are injured or killed, not including the shooter.
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