STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Police in Birmingham, Ala., are looking for suspects in a mass shooting that killed four people and left at least 17 wounded over the weekend.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The incident took place Saturday night in a popular entertainment district. It also has the city's mayor talking about the need to solve the gun violence epidemic in America.
INSKEEP: Andrew Yeager is covering this story. He's with our member station WBHM in Birmingham. Andrew, good morning.
ANDREW YEAGER, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What happened?
YEAGER: Well, police say that they believe this was a targeted killing, possibly a murder for hire. They say multiple suspects drove into that entertainment area, got out of a vehicle, began shooting, and then left in a vehicle. And this happened outside of a hookah bar where people were lined up to go inside. Police believe that one of the people killed was the intended victim while others were just caught in the crossfire. And in terms of the guns, authorities say they were fully automatic weapons. These might involve Glock switches, which convert semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic weapons. The devices are banned under federal law, although Alabama has no equivalent state level ban.
INSKEEP: Andrew, every detail you're giving me is like a gut punch, that only one person was targeted, that so many were hit by these fully automatic weapons. So what does Birmingham's mayor say about this?
YEAGER: Well, Mayor Randall Woodfin called gun violence an American epidemic. He added that Birmingham is at the tip of that spear. But he also said gun violence is a solvable problem if people work together. He specifically called out elected leaders.
RANDALL WOODFIN: Elected officials, locally, statewide, and nationally, have a duty to solve this American crisis, this American epidemic of gun violence. We should not allow people to just ride around with any style type of weapon that doesn't even belong on domestic streets? It should not be allowable, period. I don't care what your politics are.
YEAGER: Woodfin went on to say that to attack gun violence, law enforcement needs stronger laws, particularly at the local level. And he went on to say that leaders owe it to the victims, to their families, to the community to actually solve that problem of gun violence.
INSKEEP: One of the ways this is different from some other mass shootings is that the, well, the attacker or attackers got away. You don't have somebody who's been shot. You don't have somebody who's been arrested. So where does the investigation go from here?
YEAGER: Well, police say that they're reviewing surveillance footage of the incident, but beyond that, they're really imploring the public to come forward with any information that they might have. Here's Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurman.
SCOTT THURMOND: Really, it just comes down to just some time, information from the public and us just doing our job. So I can assure you that us doing our job is not going to be an issue. It's the public's assistance is where it's really going to come down to at the end of the day.
YEAGER: Saturday night shooting follows another shooting that happened at an event hall during an adult birthday party in Birmingham back in July. Four people were killed in that event, about 10 wounded. No one was arrested in that case. Authorities, I should mention, don't believe there's a link between these two shootings, but it is an instance of how violent Birmingham has been this year.
INSKEEP: How bad a year has it been?
YEAGER: Well, the city has already seen 123 homicides this year. The record is 148 - that was set back in 1933. And there's a variety of reasons for the increase, including the availability of guns, and officers say another problem is just a culture of tit-for-tat violence, where criminals escalate their responses to skirmishes and disagreements, and it explodes into shootings.
INSKEEP: Andrew Yeager, managing editor at WBHM in Birmingham, Ala. Thanks so much.
YEAGER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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