CALIFORNIAN POLICE today searched for multiple suspects who opened fire into a group of people recording a rap music video in a parking lot and wounded seven, including a toddler and two adults who were critically hurt.
The gunfire erupted around 6pm yesterday outside an off-licence near Interstate 880 in west Oakland, police said. The victims were transported to local hospitals by others at the scene before officers arrived.
Police Chief Howard Jordan said a man, a woman and a 1-year-old boy were critically injured. The rest of the victims sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
Police initially reported a total of eight people shot but revised that number today.
Bullet holes riddled the exterior of State Market Liquors, and two cars still parked outside today had shattered windows and flat tires from bullets.
‘Yelling and screaming from inside and outside’
The store’s co-owner, Salah Abdullah, who was inside the business when the shooting occurred, said about 15 people were gathered outside, using small cameras to record the music video. Some of them were posing with liquor bottles outside the store entrance when gunfire erupted, sending Abdullah ducking for cover.
“Everybody was scared,” Abdullah said, estimating that he heard about 50 shots. “There was yelling and screaming from inside and outside the store.”
The store’s surveillance video captured parts of the shooting, including three people wearing hooded sweat shirts firing from around the corner of the store, he said.
Larry White, 35, said he was entering his apartment across the street from the store when the shooting happened. After the gunfire subsided, he said he saw a car speeding away from the scene and a man holding a little boy who was bleeding from the head.
“I hope everybody is all right, especially that little man,” White said.
Relatives of the toddler who gathered at Children’s Hospital Oakland on today declined to speak with reporters. The hospital would not release any information about the child.
A van belonging to a local rapper who goes by the name Kafani was seen in the parking lot at the time of the shooting, but the rapper denied being at the scene. He posted to Twitter yesterday that he had not been shot but to pray for his little cousin.
“I don’t know whether they were shooting a video, or if the video was finished or what. I don’t know anything about that. I was at the studio,” Kafani told KGO-TV. “All I know was I started getting tweets that I was shot or something like that, and it was going crazy.”
Kafani did not immediately return requests for comment from The Associated Press.
Police at a news conference today would not say whether the video being recorded was Kafani’s. However, Jordan said investigators “don’t think that Kafani has any significance in this case.”
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