At least one person was killed and three were wounded during a shooting at a Juneteenth-related festival in Washington, D.C., on Sunday night, police said.
Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee
told reporters on Sunday night that hundreds of people gathered for the Juneteenth festival called “Moechella,” saying that it was possible an “unpermitted event.”
The individual who was shot and killed was 15 years old, Contee
said at a briefing, adding that the shooting occurred at around 8:30 p.m. local time. A police officer was also shot in the leg, he said.
What sparked the shooting wasn’t immediately clear. No arrests have been made so far.
One person described the chaos on
Twitter, writing: “There was some type of shooting or something at moechella. I ain’t never run (sic) and jump over people like that in my life.”
Contee said that the unpermitted “Moechella” concert was slated to run from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., but he said police were working to shut it down early due to several incidents in the area. He didn’t elaborate.
“We certainly want to make sure people are held accountable when they hold unpermitted events in our city,” Contee said Sunday. “This is one of the reasons why.”
According to an Instagram page for “Moechella,” it was being held for Juneteenth, which was made a federal holiday last year by the Biden administration. The event, held in a historically African-American neighborhood, was described as a “peaceful demonstration” with several artists performing.
“We have a child who was killed today at an event that did not have any proper planning for the number of people who were here and with guns involved,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat,
said on Sunday at the press conference. “The chief and I will continue to make sure we have the resources we need on these corridors and all of our corridors but we need some accountability here.”
Contee said that legal action may be taken against the event’s organizers.
“Unfortunately things like this can happen when you have the wrong mix of people, or people who introduce firearms into a situation,” he added. “When you have large gatherings in a dense area, all it takes is one person introducing a gun to the situation that makes it deadly. In this case, unfortunately, a 15-year-old lost his life.”
There were 226 homicides
reported in Washington, D.C., in 2021—the highest figure in decades recorded in the city, a municipality that has among the strictest gun-control laws in the United States.
