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A suspect was arrested Thursday in Raleigh, North Carolina, after a shooting that killed five people, including a police officer. The state governor denounced “a senseless act of violence”. In 2021, approximately 49,000 people died from gunshot wounds in the United States.
It’s a new drama involving firearms in the USA. A suspect was arrested Thursday, October 13 in Raleigh, in the south-east of the country, after the shooting death of five people, including a policeman who was not on duty, announced the authorities of this city.
The shooter also injured several people, including one seriously, including a police officer from a canine squad. The vital prognosis of the latter is however not engaged, indicated the mayor of the municipality, Mary-Ann Baldwin, deploring a “sad and tragic day”.
The first shots rang out shortly after 5 p.m. (9 p.m. GMT) on a walking trail in this city of nearly 500,000 people, capital of North Carolina.
A large contingent of security forces was then deployed to find the perpetrator of the shooting, local media reported.
“I saw him pass in front of my house, in the garden. He had a long-barreled hunting rifle and was dressed in camouflage,” Robert, a witness who did not wish to give his name, told the local channel WRAL.
At an evening press conference, Ms Baldwin detailed that “at approximately 8 p.m., Raleigh police (had) reported having surrounded a suspect at a residence in the area.”
“The suspect has been taken into custody,” the city police tweeted shortly after. He is a “young white man”, according to Lieutenant Jason Borneo.
“We must do more”
“Tonight, terror has knocked on our door,” state governor Roy Cooper said at a press conference. “Every population’s nightmare has happened in Raleigh. A senseless, horrific and infuriating act of violence has taken place.”
Shootings regularly mourn the United States, which pays a very heavy price for the dissemination of firearms on its territory and the ease with which Americans have access to it.
Faced with this scourge, “we must do more”, called the mayor of the capital of North Carolina, visibly upset. “We must put an end to this wanton violence in America. We must respond to gun violence. Our task is immense. And tonight our mourning is immense.”
In 2021, approximately 49,000 people died from gunshot wounds in the United States compared to 45,000 in 2020, which was already a record year. This represents more than 130 deaths per day, more than half of which are suicides.
However, it is the shootings with many victims that mark the spirits the most, while illustrating the ideological gap between conservatives and progressives on the question of how to prevent such tragedies.
Recent American history is indeed punctuated by killings, without any place of daily life seeming safe, from the company to the church, from the supermarket to the discotheque, from the public highway to public transport common.
Florida high school massacreon February 14, 2018 in Parkland, sparked a vast national movement, spearheaded by young people, to demand stricter supervision of individual weapons in the United States.
But, despite the mobilization of more than a million demonstrators, the United States Congress has failed to pass ambitious legislationmany elected officials being under the influence of the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), the first American arms lobby.
In fact, in a country where the possibility of owning a firearm is considered by millions of Americans as a fundamental constitutional right, the only recent legislative advances remain marginal, such as the generalization of criminal and psychiatric background checks above all weapon purchase.
With AFP