A false alarm of shooting caused the anguish of hundreds of people who attended this month in Orlando (Florida) to a pyrotechnic show for the Day of Independence of the United States.
This event occurred in the Universal CityWalk Orlando park, in Florida. Several minutes of panic over what appeared to be a shooting inside the complex.
Videos of uniformed men entering the attraction complex began to circulate through social networks, responding to the call of a possible attack with a firearm.
It should be noted that hours before the riot in Orlando there had been a shooting in the town of Highland Park, regarding 40 kilometers from Chicago, during an Independence Day parade, in which at least six people died and dozens were injured. serious.
“At this time it appears that a noise that occurred during the fireworks display confused some viewers,” Orlando Police said in a message on Twitter.
For its part, the local news station WESH reported that the public was forced to leave the park due to the risk of possible attacks with firearms and when the Orlando Police Department arrived at the site they reported that “Several young people” were leading a fight inside one of the parking lots, which led some visitors to assume that it was an active shooter.
In the midst of the chaos, the police posted a message on social networks, warning that there was no evidence of a shooting at the place where the show was held and asking people to calm down.
However, several published videos show how panic seized people, who began to run in all directions.
“There were thousands of people coming towards me, so we started running. And then at one point people were pushing so hard that we let go of each other’s hands and I panicked,” Katie Chung, a woman who was watching the show with her family, told Orlando’s WESH channel.
After the scandalous moment, the police established a family reunification point in view of the number of people who were separated from their family members in the riot.
In addition, the numerous abandoned objects were collected in a specific place so that people can go look for them.
Although this was not the only shooting alarm issued in Orlando this Saturday, July 23, since a similar incident occurred earlier in a shopping center. According to the BNO News portal, hundreds of people fled the site thinking that their lives were in danger, but all that panic was caused by the fireworks.
On the other hand, the non-profit organization Gun Violence Archive points out that until the end of June this year, in the United States there have been more than 300 shootings, of which 15 have left four or more dead.
Mall shooting
Three people died and three were injured in a shooting that took place this Sunday in the food court of a shopping center located in the city of Indianapolis, in the state of Indiana. This is the latest in a wave of gun violence in the United States.
“We experienced a mass shooting tonight at Greenwood Park Mall,” Greenwood Town Mayor Mark Myers said in a statement. In addition, Mark Myers explained that, so far, the death of three people has been recorded and three others have been injured. The shooter would have been killed by “an armed individual”.
It is the latest incident in a wave of gun violence sweeping the United States, where some 40,000 gun deaths a year are reported, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The attack came a couple of weeks following a gunman opened fire at a Fourth of July parade in an affluent Chicago suburb that left seven people dead and at least three dozen wounded.
Likewise, it took place following two massacres in May: ten African-Americans were shot dead in a supermarket in Buffalo, in the state of New York; Y 19 children and two teachers were killed in an elementary school in Texas.
The recent rise in gun violence has reignited the harsh debate over gun regulation in the country. A House committee will vote this week, for the first time in nearly 20 years, on a bill to ban assault rifles.
