Nine people were shot and wounded in downtown Tucson, Arizona, early Sunday, when a gunman opened fire in a crowded nightlife district before police officers on patrol confronted and shot him. The shooting happened at around 2 a.m. local time, when the streets of the entertainment area were still busy with people out for a Saturday night.
According to Tucson police, officers were on foot patrol in the district when they heard gunfire and immediately ran toward it. The area, around East Congress Street and North 6th Avenue, is one of the city's liveliest at that hour, and additional patrol officers had been assigned there precisely because of the size of the weekend crowds gathered downtown.
As the officers reached the scene, they encountered a male suspect running away from the area of the gunfire. Police say the officers gave the man repeated commands before a uniformed officer fired his department-issued weapon and struck him. The suspect, an adult man whose name has not been released, was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.
All nine of the victims were adults, and police said they were taken to area hospitals in critical condition. Their injuries were described as gunshot wounds to the extremities. No police officers were hurt during the shooting itself or in the confrontation with the suspect that followed as they moved in on the scene.
Investigators are still working to establish what set off the gunfire in the middle of the busy district. Police say one line of inquiry is whether the shooting grew out of an earlier confrontation between two groups, though authorities have not confirmed a motive and have stressed that the investigation remains in its early stages.
Because the episode ended in a police-involved shooting, the Pima County Sheriff's Department has taken over as the lead agency on the investigation. That is standard practice in the region when officers use deadly force, allowing an outside department to independently review the actions of the officers who were involved.
The suspect remained in custody at the hospital as detectives worked to identify everyone involved and to reconstruct the sequence of events. Local leaders responded publicly to the shooting in the hours afterward, as the downtown district, normally known for its restaurants, bars and weekend crowds, was left to absorb the aftermath of the overnight violence.