On Monday, an 18-year-old gunman killed three people and injured six others, including two police officers, in a hamlet in northwestern New Mexico, before he was shot dead by police outside a church.
About 290 kilometres (180 miles) northwest of Albuquerque, in a suburb of Farmington, New Mexico, a shooting occurred in the late morning.
Farmington police officers responded “to discover a disorderly scene where a male topic was actively shooting upon people because community,” deputy chief of operations Baric Crum said in a news release some hours later.
According to Farmington authorities spokesman Shanice Gonzales, three citizens were killed and six others injured, including two police officers, before the perpetrator was fatally shot by police.
She told Reuters by phone that the gunman had walked about a quarter of a mile while firing at random witnesses inside and outside the church before he was confronted by police.
There was no blatantly clear aim.
We’re still trying to figure out why he stayed here,” Crum said to the press.
The gunman, who police only identified as an 18-year-old, is believed to have acted alone, authorities said. The identities of the deceased were not disclosed.
Gonzales has seen and confirmed the authenticity of video footage of the occurrence that was uploaded to the social media app TikTok.
A man in all black can be seen walking back and forth across the driveway of the First Church of Christ Scientist while carrying what seems to be a revolver. Moments later, he is seen being shot dead by police officers on the sidewalk in front of the building.
The cameraman can be heard speaking to another individual, detailing the suspect’s erratic movements near the church. Continuing, he says, “There’s an individual laying [in] the middle of the street.”
Officials at San Juan Regional Medical Centre said that the two injured officers, one from the Farmington Police Department and one from the New Mexico State Police, were in stable condition. The status of the four injured bystanders was unknown.
Until police determined there was no longer a threat to the public, many public schools in Farmington, a population of over 46,000 people, went into lockdown due to the weapon violence.
There have been at least two other notable incidents of fatal weapon violence in Farmington, a major oil and gas drilling hub and shopping destination for the nearby Navajo Nation and smaller towns in the Four Corners area where the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah meet, in recent years.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a proclamation, “This serves as yet another pointer of how weapon violence ruins lives in our state and nation every day.”
Last month, police in Farmington, Washington, fired gunfire with a homeowner before killing him after arriving at the wrong residence in response to a domestic violence incident.
In addition, a high school shooting in Farmington in December 2017 claimed the lives of two students and the shooter before he committed suicide.
According to the non-profit organisation Gun Violence Archive, Monday’s massacre was one of at least 225 mass shootings recorded in the United States this year. According to the organisation, a mass shooting occurs when four or more people are injured or killed (not including the perpetrator).