Gunmen Open Fire At Arkansas Charity Car Show, Leaving Man Dead, 28 Wounded
Arkansas State Police are investigating a shooting that killed one person and wounded 28 people at a charity car show, on Saturday (March 19), leaving its organizers devastated and a community looking for answers.
Officials say Cameron Shaffer, 23, was fatally shot when two people began shooting at each other during an argument, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. It is not clear what spurred the confrontation. The violence took place during the show, sponsored by a local organization called the Hood-Nic Foundation, which was raising funds for scholarships and school supplies. The group gave the event at a retail store parking lot in Dumas, Ark., a rural community about an hour and 20 minutes south of LIttle Rock.
"The bottom line on this is two individuals got in a gunfight," Arkansas State Police Director Bill Bryant said during a press conference, explaining that the incident was not a mass shooting. “Unfortunately we had multi victims of a shooting incident.”
Local police are seeking one of those suspects while Dumas police arrested the other person “who fit the general description” of a suspect and who left the scene of the shooting,
However, Bryant said that the person is facing unrelated charges, and both suspects will not be publicly identified until they are formally charged, the Democrat-Gazette reported.
The surviving victims, some of whom are children, at least six children, were taken to local hospitals.
“A big part of Hood-Nic has been to bring about unity and prevent incidents like this,” Hood-Nic Chief Development Officer Kris Love-Keys said. “This was the 16th year of the event, and there had never been an incident like this.”
Love-Keys, who visited the hospitals, said, “The children are stable and doing OK.”
Another organizer of the event, Wallace McGee of the Delta NEYO (Neighborhood Empowerment Youth Organization), lamented the violence, but vowed that Hood-Nic would stand by the community as it heals.
“Sometimes it takes one bad apple, but we're not going to let it ruin us,” McGee told reporters. “We're going to stand with our community, we're going to stand with our town, we're going to stand with our loved ones.”
