Crime scene technicians look over the Young Park parking lot Saturday after a mass shooting overnight in Las Cruces, N.M.
LAS CRUCES, N.M. — At least three people were killed and 14 others were injured in a mass shooting at a park in the desert city of Las Cruces, N.M., police said Saturday.
Police were asking Saturday for bystanders to share videos and other tips as they continued to seek any suspects in the attack, which occurred about 10 p.m. Friday in Young Park, a music and recreation venue.
Gunshot victims were sent to all three local hospitals and to University Medical Center of El Paso, the regional trauma center, according to police and hospital officials. Six patients arrived at Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces by ambulance and private car, said communications director Andrew Cummins, and five of those have been transported to El Paso.
In an Instagram post on Saturday, Las Cruces City Councilor and Mayor Pro Tem Johana Bencomo addressed the tragedy.
“Part of me wanted to write that this is something you never really think ... is going to happen in your city, but that actually feels deeply untrue,” she wrote. “Honestly now days a tragedy like this feels like a nightmare just waiting to come true at any possible moment, yet also always praying and hoping it never will.”
Las Cruces sits on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert along the Rio Grande River in southern New Mexico, about 40 miles north of the Mexican border.
The Las Cruces Police Department said police and fire personnel who responded to the park shooting were being assisted in their investigation by New Mexico State Police, the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The Police Department was still on the scene Saturday and the area around the park was closed to traffic, according to local news reports.
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