As police, policymakers and family members of victims continued to grapple with a deadly shootout in downtown Sacramento Sunday that left six dead and 12 injured, gang intervention experts in the city said the explosion of violence appeared to have sprung up with little warning.
“I was just astonished,” said Julius Thibodeaux, who works with the group Movement for Life, which runs a “boots on the ground” operation with the city’s gang members. The group makes it a point to know what is happening in the city’s troubled neighborhoods, the better to try to stop violence before it erupts. But Thibodeaux said when he got the news at 3 a.m. Sunday about the carnage that unfolded outside downtown nightclubs just blocks from the state capital, it came “out of the blue.”
After initially saying the deadly incident involved a man firing from a car as bar patrons streamed onto 10th Street, Sacramento police on Wednesday said that at least five people drew weapons and began firing into the crowd. The dead included three fathers, two young women out for a night on the town and a homeless woman who often slept in the neighborhood and chatted with local business owners.
