(Headline USA) Authorities in rural southern Georgia were still searching Monday for suspects in weekend shootings that killed two people and left nearly three dozen others injured when gunfire erupted during a sprawling block party to celebrate a homecoming football victory.
No arrests have been announced in Dooly County, where the sheriff says more than 50 shots were fired early Sunday in the small city of Vienna as more than 1,000 people were still outside celebrating long after midnight.
Dooly County Sheriff Craig Peavy identified the two people killed as Ja’Quavion Jackson, 21, of Cordele, and Macaleb Jackson, 23, of Hawkinsville. The two men don’t appear to be related, said Sara Lue, a spokesperson for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
An additional 35 people were injured — most of them by gunfire, though others were hurt in the chaotic scramble to flee, authorities told reporters at a Sunday news conference. The sheriff said an unspecified number were hospitalized with critical injuries.
Authorities haven’t said what may have motivated the shootings or precisely how many people were shot.
“At large parties with people from different places, not just your locals, sometimes problems come,” Peavy said Sunday.
Local officials say the block party wasn’t a school-sponsored event and didn’t have a city permit. Peavy said he had extra deputies working over the weekend in anticipation of homecoming drawing large numbers of alumni and other out-of-town visitors.
The sheriff did not immediately return a phone message Monday. Lue said no further updates were available from state investigators, who customarily assist Georgia’s rural communities in major cases.
The violence marred what Peavy said had been a large but otherwise peaceful celebration of Dooly County High School winning its homecoming football game in Vienna, a city of about 3,000 people located about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Macon.
Crowds of revelers gathered across an area covering four blocks, and Peavy said that he had deputies patrolling the area. When the first shots were fired and deputies rushed to the scene, he said, more gunfire sounded about a block away.
“It was so many people,” Peavy said. “And it was just hard to figure out what was going on.”
Among this weekend’s visitors was Antoria Felton of Jonesboro, who drove two hours to bring her daughter and six other girls to Vienna. She told WMAZ-TV that everything seemed peaceful when suddenly “bullets were going everywhere.”
Felton said she saw that “kids laying on the ground had been shot” as she scrambled to find her daughter and the other girls.
“The only thing I’m trying to do is find these girls,” Felton said. “Everybody scattered out everywhere, everybody running. It was terrifying.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
