A shooting near a popular shopping district in downtown Atlanta on Saturday killed at least one person and left at least five others injured.
The shooting took place steps from the city's Atlantic Station shopping district around 8 p.m., shortly after off-duty Atlanta police officers and Atlantic Station personnel escorted a "group of juveniles" off Atlantic Station property, Atlanta Police Homicide Commander Lieutenant Germaine Dearlove said in a press conference.
The group moved to nearby 17th street, where a dispute broke out and escalated to gunfire, Dearlove said. Police believe the six victims range in age between 15 and 21 years old.
Dearlove said the group had been removed from Atlantic Station for "unruly behavior and also curfew violations." In the aftermath of a spate of shootings late last year, Atlantic Station said in January that it was tightening its curfew for anyone under under the age of 18 to 3 p.m. Previously, the curfew had been set at 6 p.m.
Details of what led up to the shooting remain unclear, according to investigators, but Dearlove said it is possible the dispute involved multiple shooters between two groups.
"Currently, we're in the preliminary stage," Dearlove said. "We're in a fact-finding mission to see what exactly occurred."
He added, "The Atlanta police department, the city of Atlanta, we do our very best to identify suspects involved in violent crimes and we do our job and we're good at our job. We're going to do what we have to do to keep the city safe."
The Atlanta shooting was one of at least six mass shootings to take place in the U.S. over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The group defines a mass shooting as an incident where four or more people are shot or killed, excluding the shooter. In all, the U.S. has seen at least 615 mass shootings in 2022.
Since the start of November, the nation has seen at least 40 mass shootings, including the Colorado Springs shooting at a LGBTQ nightclub which killed five people and injured at least 25 others.
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