No fewer than three people were killed and another three severely injured Sunday afternoon after shootings at a mall in the US state of Indiana, officials confirmed becoming the latest in a spate of gun violence in the country.
In a statement on Monday morning, Mark Myers, the mayor of Greenwood, Indiana, said; ‘We experienced a mass shooting this evening at the Greenwood Park Mall’.
‘We have three fatalities at this time and three others injured.’
Myers went on to add that the gunman had been shot dead by ‘an armed individual.’
In a post shared on their Facebook page which was sighted by Africa Today News, New York, the Greenwood police asked for witnesses to the shooting to contact the department with information.
The attack is the latest in a wave of gun violence plaguing the United States, where about 40,000 deaths a year are caused by firearms, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
It comes just weeks after a gunman opened fire on a July 4 parade in an affluent Chicago suburb, killing seven people and injuring at least three dozen.
That shooting followed two massacres in May that saw 10 Black people gunned down at an upstate New York supermarket, and 19 children and two teachers slain at an elementary school in Texas.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the recent surge in gun violence has reignited the divisive debate over firearm regulation. A committee of the US House of Representatives is set to vote this week for the first time in nearly 20 years on a bill that would ban assault weapons.