A lone gunman entered a church in the southern U.S. state of Alabama on Thursday and opened fired on a small meeting, killing two people and wounding another person.
Officials say the unidentified suspect in the shooting at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in the Birmingham suburb of Vestavia Hills has been detained.
"This should never happen -- in a church, in a store, in the city, or anywhere,” Governor Kay Ivey said. “We continue to closely monitor the situation."
According to the church’s website, a Boomer’s Potluck dinner was scheduled for Thursday evening. The announcement of the event of the site asked people to “bring a dish to share” and invited people to “simply eat and have time for fellowship.”
Thursday’s church shooting is the latest in a series of recent shootings in the United States that have again sparked debate about the need for gun reform. Last month, 10 Black people were killed in a racist attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Later in the month, 19 elementary school children and two adults were killed by a gunman in Uvalde, Texas.
Thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington Saturday to call for stricter gun control measures.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
