CNN
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An uninvited group opened fire at a Halloween house party in Kansas City, Kansas, Monday night, killing a 17-year-old and injuring six other teenagers, police said.
The department said in a news release Tuesday that one person was in custody, although police did not identify the person as a suspect and that they had located a vehicle that investigators believe was driven by the suspect.
About 70 to 100 teens attended the fancy dress party when some uninvited guests arrived and were asked to leave, Kansas City Police Chief Karl Oakman said Tuesday. If the people leave, more than one of them — maybe four to six — “rushes to the house,” Oakman said.
The gunman, dressed in costume and mask, is believed to have left in a black SUV, according to Oakman.
The sound of gunfire is another example of how gun violence often interrupts Americans’ lives in places traditionally seen as safe, from schools to stores to hospitals and even funerals. Also on Monday night, at least 14 people were shot dead on a busy street corner in Chicago, where people gathered for a vigil, police said.
In Kansas City, the police chief expressed dissatisfaction with the violence, saying the shooting was disturbing and unacceptable.
“This kind of thing in the community has to stop. There are too many guns here. This is a party for high school students,” Oakman said in his first news conference Monday night. “Everyone has guns now. We need to be smarter than that.”
The shooting reportedly happened just after 9 p.m. Someone noticed a group of uninvited guests arriving and “much older than the other kids at the party,” Oakman said Tuesday.
The group pulled out, but “once they got out … they shot at the house,” Oakman said. He said the gunman appeared to fire at random.
The victim’s name was not released. One 18-year-old victim was in stable condition in the hospital, and five other people, aged 15 to 16, were injured in non-life-threatening conditions, Oakman said Tuesday.
Some of the shooting victims were inside and some were outside, the person in charge said.
Information about the party has been posted on social media and is “by invitation only,” Oakman said. A parent was at home at the time, he said.
It was likely that “someone knew (the attackers) and told them about the party,” the chief said on Tuesday. “So, we need those people to call us and provide information.”
So far this year, there have been more than 500 mass shootings in the United States, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. The group said that as of Tuesday, the number was 574, an average of more than 1.8 mass shootings per day, and like CNN, it defines a mass shooting as at least four people were shot and killed, excluding the shooter.