Dandre Martin: Arrested a man linked to the Sacramento shooting that left six dead | International

A 26-year-old man is the first detainee linked to the shooting that left six dead and a dozen injured early this Sunday in Sacramento, the capital of California. Dandre Martin has been arrested and charged with assault and unlawful possession of a weapon. Authorities continue to search for the attackers involved in the incident recorded in a busy downtown area. The victims of the event, three men and three women, have been identified this Monday by the coroner’s office.

The police are looking for two more suspects of having participated in the shooting that began, according to some witnesses, after a fight after the closure of bars in the area. The security forces have searched three houses in the city in the last hours and have been able to recover two pistols from the crime scene, one of them had a report as a stolen weapon. Experts from the Sacramento Police Department continued to work Monday morning inside the cordoned-off streets of downtown, trying to understand the trajectory of the shots in what they believe involved several armed assailants. At least 100 shell casings have been recovered from the scene.

“It is a very complex investigation that is underway, but we anticipate more arrests,” Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester told local television this morning. Authorities continue to study “hundreds of evidence” such as images taken by eyewitnesses and by security cameras found in the area, an area a short distance from the local capitol, which comes alive at night and on weekends. A police camera located at the intersection of Calle 10 and Calle K also documented the shooting.

Lester believes multiple attackers were involved in the incident and has asked to wait until charges are filed against Martin to find out how the suspect was involved. The police chief, however, has revealed that Martin was barred by law from having a gun, but she has not specified whether he had a criminal record.

The forensic doctor has identified the victims of the event on Monday morning. These were Johntanya Alexander, 21 years old; Yamile Martinez Andrade, also 21; Melinda Davis, 57; Devazia Turner, a 29-year-old man; Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi, 32, and Sergio Harris, 38, who had been married for 12 years and left behind three children, ages 5, 6 and 11. Seven of the 12 people who were injured have already left the hospital. The authorities have not specified the health status of the remaining five patients.

“The scale of the violence our city has endured is unprecedented in the 27 years I’ve been here,” Lester said at a news conference Sunday night. Lester is one of many authorities demanding stricter regulation on the sale and possession of weapons for California and Sacramento, a city that has seen the number of homicides increase after the pandemic.

Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.

subscribe

President Joe Biden condemned the attack and asked not only to mourn the deaths of this attack. “We must act,” said the president in a statement that aims to draw the attention of Congress, where a series of reforms proposed by his Administration have been lulling for a year thanks to the Republicans to make arms sales stricter and prohibit ghost weapons (which are sold for parts, making them more difficult to trace).

subscribe here to the newsletter of EL PAÍS América and receive all the key information on current affairs in the region