(Reuters) – Authorities were expected to offer more information on Thursday on a shooting that left four people dead, including a child, on Wednesday at an office building in suburban Los Angeles before a suspect, wounded in an exchange of gunfire with police, was taken into custody.
The bloodshed in the city of Orange, about 30 miles (48 km)southeast of downtown Los Angeles, marked the third deadly mass shooting in the United States in less than a month. Authorities offered no explanation as to a possible motive. They have scheduled a briefing for later on Thursday.
Orange Police Department Lieutenant Jennifer Amat told reporters on Wednesday that police officers arrived on the scene at about 5:30 p.m. local time as shots were being fired and “engaged with the suspect.”
She said three adults and one child were found shot dead, and two other people struck by gunfire, including the alleged shooter, were transported to area hospitals.
Audio of Amat’s on-scene briefing with reporters was played for Reuters afterward by video news service OnScene.TV.
The police department said in a message posted to its Facebook page that the situation had since been “stabilized” with no further threat to the public.
The shooting erupted in a two-story office building that opens onto an inner courtyard ringed by several businesses. The larger neighborhood consists of homes, apartments and other commercial properties.
Officials had no further details of the incident immediately available.
The shooting came a little more than two weeks after eight people were shot to death by a gunman who went on a rampage at three Atlanta-area day spas on March 16.
Ten people were killed on March 22, when a man opened fire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. The lone suspects in both those shootings were arrested.
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Twitter called the latest bloodshed “horrifying and heartbreaking.”
Activists also took to social media to renew calls for politicians to act on gun control legislation.
“Mass shootings are the tip of the iceberg of this country’s gun violence crisis,” Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said in a tweet. “Tell your Senators to act. Now.”
(Reporting by Alex Gallardo in Orange, California and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
