A 15-year-old faces 11 counts of attempted second-degree murder after a shooting near Florida A&M University’s homecoming left 12 people hurt, including six children.
CBS News reported that Tallahassee police on Monday identified the suspect as Anthony Rivers III, 15, and said he also faces a charge of possession of a firearm by a delinquent.
The gunfire broke out Saturday night in a crowded area near a football stadium after a Florida A&M University homecoming game. Eleven people took gunshot wounds. Another person hurt an ankle while running from the shots.
Six of the injured were children. Police said a preliminary investigation points to a fight before the shooting, and that none of the victims appear to have been the intended targets.
That is the picture law enforcement has put forward so far: a street fight, a juvenile already barred from having a gun, and bystanders, including kids, paying the price in a homecoming crowd.
Tallahassee police said Rivers faces 11 counts of attempted second-degree murder along with possession of a firearm by a delinquent. Officials also said additional arrests were possible and that the investigation remains open and active.
The department’s own news release is the basis for those charging details. Police have not publicly laid out a full motive in the material available, and they have not said the case is limited to a single shooter.
What they have said is blunt enough. A fight came first. Then gunfire. Then a crowded post-game scene full of people who, by the department’s account, were not the intended targets.
Sunday’s hospital update made the human cost plain. Police said six shooting victims remained hospitalized. Five had been discharged. One of those still in the hospital was treated for critical injuries.
Earlier, the department had said at least three people sustained serious injuries, with nine others reported in stable condition. The later count settled on 12 people hurt in all, 11 by gunfire, one by an ankle injury while fleeing.
Six children were in that group. They were not described as participants in whatever fight police say preceded the shots. They were in the wrong place when someone opened fire near a university celebration.
Florida A&M University said on social media that the shooting happened near its campus and that the campus itself remained safe. The violence still landed on the edge of homecoming weekend, after a football game, in a packed public area.
University President Marva Johnson spoke Sunday of shared anger and grief over what happened near campus.
In a statement, Johnson cited
"outrage and profound sadness at the senseless and despicable shooting"
In a video shared by the university’s FAMU account, she turned directly to the wounded:
"To all the victims, please know that we are with you and we are praying for your recovery, in body, mind and spirit,"
FAMU head coach Quinn Gray struck a similar note in a Facebook post, tying the night’s violence to what homecoming is supposed to be.
Gray wrote that
"senseless violence has to stop"
He added:
"Homecoming is about family. It's about coming home to celebrate everything FAMU means to us,"
And he drew the line that should not need drawing after a college celebration:
"No one should leave our celebration in an ambulance, and no child should ever be caught in gunfire."
The charging package matters as much as the injury count. Police say Rivers is 15 and faces a count of possession of a firearm by a delinquent, language that means the justice system already treated him as someone who should not have a gun.
Yet the Saturday night scene, as police describe it, still produced 11 gunshot victims and a twelfth person hurt while running. The preliminary account is not a targeted hit on named rivals alone. It is a fight, then shots, then people who “do not appear to have been the intended targets.”
That includes children. It includes fans and families in a homecoming crowd. It includes anyone close enough to a public fight when a prohibited gun came out.
Police have left the door open to more arrests. The investigation is active. Absolute calendar dates were not fixed in the initial account beyond Saturday night for the shooting, Sunday for the hospital update and university response, and Monday for the arrest announcement. The core sequence is not in dispute in that reporting: game, crowd, fight, gunfire, mass casualties, juvenile arrest, felony counts.
No public motive has been spelled out beyond the fight that police say came first. Names, ages, and detailed conditions of each victim beyond the totals and the six children have not been released in the same material. What is on the record is enough to see the failure in plain view: a minor already flagged off gun possession, a public celebration, and bystanders bleeding because a fight did not stay a fight.
Homecoming is supposed to send people home with memories, not ambulance rides. When a juvenile barred from carrying a firearm still ends up armed in a post-game crowd, the wounded, and the children beside them, carry the cost of every gap that let that gun reach the street.
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