Four people have been confirmed dead, and 17 injured in Birmingham, Alabama, in the United States after multiple shooters opened fire in a bustling entertainment area on Saturday.
What police now believe was a targeted ‘hit’ on one of the deceased occurred just after 11 p.m. when multiple people drove up to the Five Points South area, exited their vehicle, and began shooting before returning to their vehicle and driving away, Police Chief Scott Thurmond said on Sunday.
“Someone was willing to pay money to have that person killed,” Thurmond said.
With no suspects in custody, the Birmingham Police Department is partnering with the FBI and other agencies to investigate, urging anyone with information to come forward.
It’s possible that gun conversion devices, sometimes referred to as “switches,” were used in the shooting, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said. These devices can override the trigger mechanism on a gun, so it functions as a machine gun.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Birmingham announced an initiative to crack down on the illegal devices in July.
Woodfin said gun violence is at an “epidemic level” in Birmingham.
“I want to work with the state to solve this problem,” he said.
When officers arrived at the scene Saturday night, they found two men and a woman unresponsive with gunshot wounds, and all three were later pronounced dead at the scene, Birmingham Police Officer Truman Fitzgerald said.
A fourth victim, an adult male, was pronounced dead at the University of Alabama Hospital, according to hospital staff. Police previously said 18 victims were injured.
The gunfire extends the list of at least 403 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The archive defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.
Birmingham has seen multiple mass shootings this year.