Police in Dayton, Ohio, said on Sunday that they were investigating “an active shooter incident” in the city’s Oregon District. Members of the public were urged to stay away from the neighborhood.
Multiple people were shot in the Oregon District, a historic area with a vibrant bar and restaurant scene, earlier in the night, according to local media. Eyewitness videos appear to show people running through the streets as a rapid popping noise ― apparently gunfire ― disturbs the air.
Terrea Little, a spokeswoman at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton told HuffPost that the hospital was treating 16 victims from the shooting, though she provided no details on their conditions.
A spokeswoman at Kettering Health Network, which operates several Dayton area hospitals including Kettering Medical Center and Grandview Medical Center, said earlier that they were expecting and receiving victims from the shooting ― though she gave no indication of how many victims there were nor their conditions.
The Dayton Police Department is currently investigating the attack and seeking witnesses:
Two neighboring bars in the Oregon District ― Ned Peppers and Hole In The Wall ― penned matching notes on Facebook on Sunday.
“All of our staff is safe and our hearts go out to everyone involved as we gather information,” the notes read.
The attack in Dayton came hours after at least 20 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and less than a week after a gunman opened fire at a garlic festival in California, killing three people including two children.
According to USA Today, the El Paso massacre marked the 250th mass shooting in the United States in 2019.
On Saturday evening, WDTN, the NBC affiliate in Dayton, posted an article about local law enforcement offering a class on “lifesaving techniques for mass shootings.”
″[You should] at least prepare yourself because if you’ve never thought about [a shooting] before it happens, once it happens it’s too late. You’re going to panic. You’re going to lose the precious seconds of timing that you need to escape,” John Davis, Centerville police’s community relations officer, told the station.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.