Two killed and five injured after a shooting near the US-Mexico border in Arizona
Two people were killed and five others injured in a shooting 10 miles from the US-Mexico border in Arizona.
Police were called to South J. Edward Drive in Yuma, Arizona just before 11 p.m. Saturday night. During a meeting, they found several injured.
Two men, ages 19 and 20, have died of gunshot wounds at Yuma Regional Medical Center.
Four other teenage boys aged 15, 16, 18 and 19 were taken to hospital with injuries. A fifth, aged 16, was flown to Phoenix in critical condition.
Yuma police are still trying to track down a suspect and motive for the shooting, but believe there is no greater threat to the community.
The shooting, which occurred at a rally, took place on South J. Edward Drive in Yuma, Arizona
Yuma police are still trying to track down a suspect, but believe there is no greater threat to the community
Sergeant Lori Franklin of the Yuma Police Department said on Sunday: “On Saturday, May 13, 2023, at approximately 10:54 p.m., the Yuma Police Department responded to a report of shots fired in the 3800 block by SJ Edward. Motivation.
Upon arrival, officers found several people with gunshot wounds. A 19-year-old man was transported before police arrived and was pronounced dead a short time later at Yuma Regional Medical Center.
A second victim, a 20-year-old man, was transported by the Yuma Fire Department to Yuma Regional Medical Center, where he was later pronounced deceased.
A third victim, a 16-year-old man, was transported to Yuma Regional Medical Center and later flown to Phoenix with life-threatening injuries.
“The other gunshot victims, men aged 15, 19, 18 and 16, had non-life-threatening injuries. A total of 7 victims have been treated at YRMC.
“There were several off-duty law enforcement officers in the area who assisted in this incident. This is an active investigation and there are no suspects in custody at the time of this press release.”
This comes just days after 300 unprocessed migrants who had arrived in the border town were released by officials.
It is unclear whether the shooting is related to the recent migrant crossings.
Immigrants speak to US Border Patrol agents in the early hours of the morning after crossing into Arizona from Mexico in Yuma, Arizona on May 10, 2023
The release of the hundreds of migrants coincided with the end of Title 42 and the lifting of a Trump-era restriction designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
As a result, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detained as many as 28,000 migrants in its facilities, far beyond its capacity, according to a local official.
On Thursday, Yuma’s mayor announced that CBP planned to release migrants into the city who had not yet undergone full processing, though he insisted they had been “vetted.”
On Friday afternoon, three white buses with darkened windows drove into the Yuma Public Safety Training Facility close to the city’s airport.
The location was a closely guarded secret, but DailyMail.com was on hand to witness the release. A briefing document said 141 were released.
Streams of people could be seen climbing out of the buses and being led into a shaded waiting area, where there was at least some shelter from 96F temperatures.
From there it is understood that they are put on buses to take them to Phoenix.
On Friday afternoon, three white buses with darkened windows drove into the Yuma Public Safety Training Facility close to the city’s airport.
Migrants were seen on buses in Yuma, Arizona coinciding with the end of Title 42 and the lifting of a Trump-era restriction to prevent the spread of COVID-19
Nearly 300 newly arrived migrants were released by officials in Yuma, Arizona, on Friday, illustrating how border towns are grappling with a massive surge
It followed a similar release of about 140 people at a separate location in Yuma and nearby San Luis in the morning.
Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines said the process was a recognition that federal authorities simply could not handle.
“This is depressing and the federal government is relying on the local and state government to do its job,” he said.
“It is another failure by the Biden administration to solve a problem they created with their open borders policy.”
A day earlier, Mayor Douglas Nicholls urged the people of Yuma to remain calm.
“These are people who have been vetted at least to the point where Border Patrol has ordered them to show papers wherever they live in the country,” he said.
“They have to follow the legal process. Unfortunately, that process takes three to seven years to go through that entire process.’
Title 42 was activated by the Trump administration to contain the spread of COVID-19. It was a public health measure that allowed border authorities to immediately deport arrivals before they could even apply for asylum.
But now that the pandemic was over, it ended at midnight eastern time on Thursday.
The Biden administration rushed through new restrictions, effectively reinstating Trump’s “transit ban,” which allows for the deportation of arrivals who did not seek asylum in countries they traveled through.
Migrants can legally report to the border if they have used a mobile app, CBP One, to pre-register.
But an 11th-hour legal challenge stalled plans to speed up the release of migrants from Border Patrol detention.
Images emerging in the wake of the end of Title 42 have shed light on the sheer volume of migrants hoping to cross into the US following the end of the pandemic-era border restriction.
A migrant camp in the Mexican border town of Matamoros was seen stretching two miles for two miles — suggesting that, despite the Biden administration’s change of border protocol on Thursday, thousands more were still planning to cross the border.
Every day for the past few weeks, 10,000 people have been stopped as migrants rushed to cross before the system changed.