The shooting occurred at about 2am (5pm, Singapore time), Lester said, near the Golden 1 Center, an arena where the Sacramento Kings basketball team plays and concerts are held.
Police said in a statement that they had recovered at least one gun at the scene and had located 12 victims “with varying degrees of injuries”.
Officers cordoned off several blocks and the scene was dotted with blue and red plastic cones that marked evidence.
Relatives waited outside the police lines seeking news about missing loved ones.
Among them was Pamela Harris, who said her daughter had called her at 2.15am to say that her 38-year-old son, Sergio, had been shot and killed outside a nightclub.
“She said he was dead. I just collapsed,” Harris said. She said she was still waiting on official confirmation from police.
“I cannot leave here now until I know what’s going on. I’m not going anywhere. It seems like a dream.”
Community activist Berry Accius said he had rushed to the scene shortly after the shooting.
“The first thing I saw was a young lady draped in her blood and others’ blood. She was just on the phone saying ‘My sister is dead! My sister is dead!’,” said Accius, whose Voice of the Youth leadership program is focused on gun violence prevention.
The area of the shooting has recently been revitalized as an entertainment center. Over the past week, pandemic masks had started coming off and bars and restaurants began filling with people long isolated by COVID-19.
“The numbers of dead and wounded are difficult to comprehend. We await more information about exactly what transpired in this tragic incident,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said on Twitter. “Rising gun violence is the scourge of our city, state and nation, and I support all actions to reduce it.
The incident comes a little more than a month after a man shot and killed his three children and a fourth person before taking his own life in the same city.
In a separate shooting overnight in Dallas, Texas, a man was killed and 11 people were injured when a person opened fire into a crowd at a concert, Dallas police said. The incident is being investigated.
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