3 Dead, 4 Injured in Shooting at House Party in New Mexico

Stock photo of police tape. (Carl Ballou/Shutterstock)

At least three people died and four were injured at a house party shooting in New Mexico, it was reported.

The incident took place in Hobbs on the morning of Aug. 25, according to the Hobbs Police Department.

Officers responded to a call of a loud party with shots fired at a home at around 12:45 a.m. local time, reported KIVA, a local news station.

When police arrived, they found seven victims at the scene.

Khalil Carter, 18; Kristal Avena, 24; and Lamar Lee Kane Jr., 22; died during the shooting, police said.

Four other people were taken to area hospitals for treatment. They were identified as Michael Major, 21; Turon Windham, 20; Rontrell Hills, 23; and Jasmine Stansell, 20.

Police said they are actively investigating the matter and asked people with information about the shootings to talk to the authorities.

A friend of Carter said that he was a kind-hearted person. “Khalil’s personality affected so many people. His happiness would hit you whether you’re having the worst of days,” said Jordan Hodge, reported KRQE News 13.

The network also reported that Lamar Lee Kane Jr. was a basketball player for the University of the Southwest.

Facts About Crime in the United States

Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).

The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.

The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.

The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.

While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend.

Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.