Reports: 9 People Shot in Washington in Less Than 30 Minutes

Rescue vehicles are seen following a shooting in Washington, D.C., U.S. September 19, 2019, in this picture obtained from social media. (Chris G Collison/via Reuters)

Nine people were shot and killed in a span of about 30 minutes in Washington on the night of Thursday, Sept. 19, police said.

At around 10 p.m. local time, officers were sent to the 1300 block of Columbia Road in Northwest, located about 2 miles from the White House, after gunfire erupted.

They found five men and one woman who were shot, WUSA9 reported, adding that one of the men died.

The incident took place along the 1300 block of Columbia Road NW at around 10:06 p.m. local time in the Columbia Heights neighborhood. (Google Maps)

None of the victims have been identified. One of the victims is in critical condition.

Police told WUSA9 that two men armed with AK-47-style rifles opened fire in an apartment courtyard on Columbia Road. The two suspects escaped via a light-colored Nissan.

Less than a half-hour later, police were called to the 1400 block of Rhode Island Avenue after reports of a shooting, WJLA reported.

A Google Street View photo shows the intersection near the shooting (Google Street View)

Police discovered two men and a woman who were injured, the report said. One man later died in the hospital, the report said.

D.C. Council Member Brianne K. Nadeau tweeted after the Columbia Heights shooting. “It is beyond time to stop the epidemic of gun violence in this country, and I will not stand by while the residents of Columbia Heights are again visited by the horrible specter of violence,” she said in a statement.

Police have not established a motive in the shootings. No suspects have been arrested.

Police also said that it’s not clear if the two shootings are connected.

Other details about the case are not clear.

According to statics and data from city, about 125 people have been killed in Washington this year, which is a 17 percent increase over the same period last year, WUSA reported.

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) (pdf).

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.