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.
Officers responded to a shooting-in-progress call at around 11:20 p.m. local time on Saturday, according to Houston Police Assistant Chief Luis Menendez-Sierra. After they arrived, Menendez-Sierra said officers discovered a “very hectic scene” with a large crowd of people running out of a makeshift club.
“It’s kind of one of these last-minute parties, pop-up parties that have been popping up lately,” Menendez-Sierra said during a news conference.
The crowd appeared to consist of “mostly juveniles” and people were “running all over the place,” trying to flee the scene as officers tended to several people who sustained gunshot wounds, according to Menendez-Sierra.
Responders found a 16-year-old boy who was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. A 16-year-old girl was transported to the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, where she was pronounced dead.
At least three others were injured, including a 13-year-old girl who was in critical condition at the Texas Children’s Hospital and a 19-year-old woman who transported herself to the hospital, according to police.
Menendez-Sierra said no suspects have been identified and asked people with information about the shooting to contact authorities.
“We don’t have suspect information or any vehicle or anything at this point, our homicide team is working on that,” Menendez-Sierra said. “We’ll try to get as much information out to the public as we can.”
Police: Shooting occurred at a non-sanctioned party
The shooting happened at an empty business on the city’s north side that was “kind of just leased out” and turned into a makeshift club, according to Menendez-Sierra. 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 non-sanctioned parties have no regulations with “nothing guarding it,” which can cause serious problems.
“These makeshift, unsanctioned pop-up parties can quickly lead to chaos and violence,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonalez said in a statement on X. “These parties quickly come together via social media. Pop-up parties raise public safety concerns and teens need to stay away for their own safety.”
Latest shooting in the U.S.
Saturday’s shooting is the latest incident of gun violence in the U.S. According to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that documents gun violence incidents across the country, there have been nearly 16,000 incidents so far this year.
Earlier this year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called gun violence an “urgent public health crisis” and urged for initiatives similar to those used against smoking and motor vehicle crashes to stop it. Murthy said an estimated 50,000 people are killed every year due to gun violence.
The rate of firearm-related deaths “reached a near three-decade high in 2021,” according to the surgeon general’s 39-page advisory. A rise in firearm‑related homicides since 2012 and firearm‑related suicides over the last two decades are also driving the crisis.
A September report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions found that firearms were the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in the U.S. for the third consecutive year and that homicides accounted for the majority of gun deaths in the age group.
“In the U.S., gun death rates in this age group have increased by 106 percent since 2013 and have been the leading cause of death among this group since 2020,” according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
