Police say multiple gunmen fired on a group of people outside on a street in the city of Birmingham.

At least four people have been killed and 18 injured in a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, police say.

“Multiple shooters fired multiple shots on a group of people” late on Saturday in the Five Points South area of the city, Birmingham police officer Truman Fitzgerald said.

Officers found the bodies of two men and one woman at the scene, while a third man later died of bullet wounds in hospital, Birmingham Police said.

  • ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    9·
    1 month ago

    The shooting may have been a result of a murder-of-hire plot, Police Chief Scott Thurmond was quoted as saying by local news outlet Al.com.

    Isn’t this, like, just about the worst possible way to conduct a hit? Even if you have a callous disregard for human life, it should be obvious that more victims + more witnesses = more heat. Single murders go unsolved all the time. Murdering a whole street full of people basically guarantees that the police will eventually find you and whoever hired you, unless you manage to flee the country or something.

    I know the murderers are real people and not, like, Agent 47, so they can’t be perfectly subtle, but they didn’t even make the smallest token effort to avoid collateral damage by, for example, jumping the target while they were alone. It’s almost like they were hired to do as much damage as possible… but who would be dumb enough to take a job that’s basically certain to be their last?

    • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
      5·
      1 month ago

      I suspect discount assassins aren’t as well organized as the sort that James Bond would typically encounter.

      • ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        I mean, lots of people who aren’t particularly well organized manage to at least murder their victims without killing any bystanders. Doing the hit in public and also killing or injuring over 20 bystanders is either intentional or astonishingly incompetent.