A father killed his three minor children and a fourth person Monday before committing suicide inside a church in Sacramento, the capital of California, police announced.
"At 17:07 p.m., we received a call about a church fire," Sacramento Police Officer Rod Grasman told a news conference.
When police arrived on the scene, "we found an adult, a father who opened fire and killed his three children, under the age of fifteen," he said, adding that "a fifth person was also killed", without being able to say. present if it had anything to do with the other victims.
After the massacre, the perpetrator turned his gun on himself.
The Sacramento sheriff's services were unable at this stage to explain why the gunman and his victims were inside the church, or what motivated this mass shooting, the firearm attack that has at least four victims in the terminology of the American authorities.
Gun attacks, particularly in schools, malls, workplaces and places of worship, are a recurring scourge in the United States, where the right to bear arms is constitutionally guaranteed. The efforts of one government after another to control their sale usually end up in the junk baskets in Congress, where the powerful arms lobby, the NRA, has a lot of influence.
Violent incidents with the use of firearms increased after the outbreak of the pandemic. In 2021, they claimed the lives of nearly 45.000 people in the United States, including 24.000 suicides. More than 1.500 minors were among the victims, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
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