According to authorities, three onlookers were hit by gunfire as well as the intended victim was killed when a group of alleged hitmen exited a car and opened fire at a hookah lounge in Birmingham, Alabama.
Additionally, according to police, 17 more individuals were shot during the mass shooting in the well-known nightlife area.
Police Chief Scott Thurmond of Birmingham warned reporters during a press conference on Sunday morning that the gunman were still on the loose.
Outside Hush, a hookah and cigar lounge on Magnolia Avenue in Five Points South, it happened at approximately eleven p.m. on Saturday.
Police have established that the shooting was intentional, while Thurmond noted that the inquiry is still in its early phases.
“We believe there was a hit, if you will, on that particular person, where someone was willing to pay money to have that person killed,” he stated.
More than a hundred shot casings were found by the police from what Thurmond described as automatic weapons.
Thurmond stated that the gunmen had been searching for their victim, who just so happened to be at the hookah lounge, but he did not elaborate on the reason behind the purported hit.
“It wasn’t the location, it was the person, so wherever the person was was where it was going to take place,” Thurmond stated. “Wherever they can catch that individual. That’s just where they happened to catch them.”
Following the gunfire, the suspects departed by car. The patients were taken to multiple hospitals by paramedics. Reporters were not briefed on the survivors’ conditions by the police. No names have been made public.
“To the victims and their families, our heartfelt condolences go out to them,” Thurmond stated. “That’s 21 people’s whose lives were forever changed. That’s 21 families who some were destroyed and some were forever altered.”
An AL.com interview with one of the survivors detailed the mayhem. Shots were fired as 24 year old Gabriel Eslami and other buddies from high school were waiting to enter the bar.
“In my mind, when it first started happening, I thought they were just shooting at people in the front of the line, but they were shooting up the line,” he stated.
He then started to run and was shot in the left buttocks.
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“I look back and it’s just gun smoke and peoples bodies laid out on the pavement,” he stated. “My car was parked out front and there was blood all over my car from other people.”
Eslami claimed that a friend of his had driven him to the hospital after he had a graze wound to the arm.
If you have any information, please contact Crime Stoppers at (205) 254-5777 or submit evidence through the evidence submission system of the Birmingham Police Department.
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