Eight children, the youngest just a year old, have been killed in a shooting spree across several homes in Shreveport, Louisiana, in what local officials are calling the worst tragedy the city has ever seen.
The victims, aged between one and 14, were among ten people shot by a lone gunman during the early hours of Sunday morning, according to Shreveport Police. Officers pursued the suspect as he attempted to flee the scene in a carjacked vehicle and shot him dead. He has not been named.
What unfolded across three Shreveport addresses
The killings took place at three separate properties, two of them on the same block, police said. Officers were first alerted shortly before 6am local time, roughly an hour after the violence is understood to have begun at around 5am (10am BST).
Shreveport Police Corporal Chris Bordelon confirmed that when officers arrived at one of the homes, all of the dead they discovered were children. “All of the deceased in this case are juveniles,” he told reporters.
One of those shot at the initial address had managed to flee to a nearby residence, Corporal Bordelon added. The gunman then seized a vehicle and drove into a different part of the neighbourhood, where officers caught up with him and opened fire.
Why investigators are treating the attack as a domestic incident
Police have said the shootings are being treated as a “domestic disturbance” rather than a random attack. Some of the children killed were related to the gunman, Corporal Bordelon confirmed, although officers have not yet publicly identified either the suspect or the victims.
The domestic characterisation was based on the nature of the initial emergency call, according to the corporal, who said officers had quickly established that the incident was “domestic in nature”.
A city struggling to absorb the scale of the loss
Mayor Tom Arceneaux described the bloodshed as unprecedented in Shreveport, a city of roughly 180,000 people in the north-west of Louisiana.
“This is a tragic situation — maybe the worst tragic situation we’ve ever had in Shreveport,” he said. He appealed for prayers for the bereaved families and for the wider community, which he said was reeling from the deaths.
The mayor acknowledged that the impact extended beyond the relatives of those killed, speaking of the toll on first responders who had attended the scenes. “We have hurting families, we have hurting police officers, coroners’ personnel,” he said. “This affects the entire community, so we all mourn with these families.”
