Three people were killed and eight others were wounded in central Mississippi early Saturday when at least two people fired guns at a group of several hundred people who were celebrating a high school football team’s homecoming win at an outdoor trail several hours after the game had ended, authorities said.
The mass shooting near the community of Lexington was preceded by a fight among some of the men at the celebration, but deputies had not yet learned what sparked the fight, said Holmes county sheriff Willie March.
Anywhere from 200 to 300 people were on the trail celebrating, and the gunfire sent them fleeing, the sheriff said in a phone interview with the Associated Press.
“It was chaos, to tell you the truth,” March said. “The shooting just started and people started running.”
The shooting about 5 miles (8km) outside Lexington followed a football game several hours earlier at the Holmes county consolidated school’s homecoming celebration. After the victory, scores of young people headed to the trail to celebrate.
Lexington is located more than 60 miles (96km) north of Jackson.
Two of the victims who died were 19, and the third was 25. The injured victims were airlifted to local hospitals.
Deputies were collecting ammunition at the scene in an effort to determine how many weapons were fired, March said.
There had been about 420 mass shootings across the US heading into this weekend, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The nonpartisan archive defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are wounded or killed.
Perennially high rates of mass shootings in the US have prompted some in the country to call for more substantial federal gun control, though Congress has largely been unable or unwilling to implement such measures.
Guardian staff contributed reporting