Deputy Chief Luis Menendez-Sierra said officers discovered a “very hectic scene” with a large crowd running out of a makeshift club.
A shooting at a pop-up party in Houston late Saturday left two teenagers dead and three others injured, including a 13-year-old girl, authorities said.
According to Houston Police Deputy Chief Luis Menendez-Sierra, officers responded to a call about a shooting around 11:20 p.m. local time on Saturday. Upon arrival, officers discovered a “very hectic scene” with a large crowd running out of a makeshift club, according to Menendez-Sierra.
“It's kind of like one of those last minute parties, pop-up parties that are popping up lately,” Menendez-Sierra said during a news conference.
According to Menendez-Sierra, the crowd appeared to be “predominantly youth” and people were “running all over the place” trying to flee the scene while officers tended to several people who had sustained gunshot wounds.
Emergency services found a 16-year-old boy who was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. A 16-year-old girl was taken to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, where she was pronounced dead.
Police said at least three other people were injured, including a 13-year-old girl who was in critical condition at Texas Children's Hospital and a 19-year-old woman who took herself to the hospital.
Menendez-Sierra said no suspects have been identified and asked anyone with information about the shooting to contact authorities.
“At this point we don't have any suspect information or a vehicle or anything, our homicide unit is working on it,” Menendez-Sierra said. “We will try to get as much information out to the public as possible.”
Police: The shooting took place at an unsanctioned party
According to Menendez-Sierra, the shooting occurred in a vacant store on the north side of the city that was “just rented out, so to speak” and converted into a makeshift club. Authorities said the party was part of a recent social media trend in which people organize unauthorized and last-minute events.
Menendez-Sierra noted that for unsanctioned parties, there are no regulations that “protect nothing,” which can lead to serious problems.
“These makeshift, unsanctioned pop-up parties can quickly escalate into chaos and violence,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonalez said in a statement on X. “These parties quickly come together through social media. Pop-up parties raise public safety concerns and youth must stay away for their own safety.”
Latest shooting in the USA
Saturday's shooting is the latest incident of gun violence in the United States. There have been nearly 16,000 incidents so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that documents gun violence incidents across the country.
Earlier this year, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called gun violence an “urgent public health crisis” and called for initiatives similar to those against smoking and car accidents to stop it. Murthy said an estimated 50,000 people are killed by gun violence every year.
Gun-related deaths “nearly reached their highest level in three decades in 2021,” the surgeon general’s 39-page report said. An increase in gun-related homicides since 2012 and gun-related suicides over the past two decades are also driving the crisis.
A September report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions found that guns were the leading cause of death among children and teenagers in the U.S. for the third year in a row, and that homicides accounted for the majority of gun deaths in that age group.
“In the U.S., firearm deaths in this age group have increased 106 percent since 2013 and have become the leading cause of death in this group as of 2020,” according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
Contributor: George Petras, USA TODAY
