Investigators had yet to determine a motive and were trying to identify the two people who were killed, the statement said. “We just want everybody to be safe”, Gov. Rick Scott told reporters at a news conference in Fort Myers.
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“Investigators are working very hard to determine a motive and answer numerous questions you have submitted”, said an earlier police statement.
The shooting at a venue tucked in a strip mall also left 14-year-old Sean Archilles dead, and a state and its governor grappling with another tragedy. She said the parties are something positive for a rough and often-violent neighborhood, and the club always hires extra security for the parties and has never had a problem.
“As the club was closing and parents were picking their children up. that’s when all this happened”, Club Blu said in a statement.
The Club Blu management posted on Facebook that they are “deeply sorry for all involved”, adding that “we tried to give the teens what we thought was a safe place to have a good time”.
Juss Olivia posted a Facebook video describing how she hid under a vehicle and then ran to escape the “nonstop spraying” of bullets.
“It was chaos. I saw a bunch of people running across the street”, nearby resident Jermaine Wilson said.
The shooting comes a little more than a month after the mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub, where 49 people were killed. It said the shooting erupted only after the event had ended, as teenagers were leaving the club and parents were arriving to pick them up. According to a spokeswoman from Lee Memorial Health Systems who spoke to The News-Press in Ft Myers, most of the 18 patients transported to hospitals have been let out. Officials said earlier that the others wounded were treated and released Monday morning.
Injuries suffered in the shooting ranged from minor to life-threatening, the Fort Myers Police Department said in a release.
Police in Fort Myers, a city of some 69,000 inhabitants on Southwestern Florida’s Gulf Coast, said they only know for sure that this was no act of terrorism, and that police have been “actively canvassing” the area to get to the bottom of what happened. All victims were transported from the scene by Lee County Emergency Medical Services to area hospitals. The police are still looking for clues in the place of the scene and think they can obtain more clues regarding this crime.
But in an email, police Capt. Jim Mulligan says the street will remain closed as authorities investigate.
Of the 19 people shot, two were killed.
Three people have been taken into custody.
An attack on June 12 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando – Florida’s theme park hub – left 49 dead in the worst mass shooting in United States history.
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In this frame from video, people gather near the scene of a fatal shooting at Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. “The investigation is still very active as is the crime scene”.
