PHOENIX — Valley elected officials are speaking out and calling for change after a violent weekend has left two people dead and several others shot in the Sunnyslope community in Phoenix.
The Phoenix Police Department responded to two separate shootings overnight Saturday in Sunnyslope. One incident involved a teenage boy who was shot and killed outside his home.
Police also responded to a shooting at a strip mall that resulted in nine people being shot, including one woman who died from her injuries.
Phoenix mayor Kate Gallego said that "change must happen now" in reference to the shootings.
Gallego referred to the incident at the strip mall as a mass shooting, saying that "time has run out."
Phoenix councilwoman Debra Stark, who represents District 3, including Sunnyslope, said the shootings are "deeply troubling" and have shaken the community.
"The shooting of nine people that took the life of one person on Hatcher Road near 10th Avenue is deeply troubling and has shaken the Sunnyslope community," Stark said in a statement.
"This violence has no place in our neighborhoods. Further troubling is an additional fatal shooting of a juvenile that happened not even a half mile away around the same time."
Around 1 a.m. Saturday at a strip mall near 10th Avenue and Hatcher Road, police said an altercation between multiple people escalated into a shooting.
Authorities believe the shooter fired "many rounds" into a crowd of about 100 people inside the strip mall, in the nearby parking lot and in the roadway. Nine people were shot, including a woman who died and a teen boy who has non-life threatening injuries.
Just an hour before and less than half a mile away, police said a teenage boy was shot and killed after he walked outside his Sunnyslope home near 13th and Vogel avenues.
Officials said it is not yet known if the two shootings were related.
Located at the base of the North Mountains and about seven miles north of downtown Phoenix, the Sunnyslope community is generally known for its creative and artistic landmarks.
Politicians across the U.S. have been calling for a reform on gun laws after multiple mass shootings in the country including, last week's shootings by an 18-year-old gunman, who killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and another attack on Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a gunman shot and killed four people and himself at a medical office.
And those came after the May 14 assault in Buffalo, New York, where a white 18-year-old wearing military gear and livestreaming with a helmet camera opened fire with a rifle at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood, killing 10 people and wounding three others in what authorities described as “racially motivated violent extremism.”
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