Methuen Police: Eight People Injured in Shooting at 'Spontaneous Car Club Meetup'

Eight people were injured in a shooting in the early morning hours on Sunday, June 16, in Methuen, Massachusetts, according to local authorities.

Essex County District Attorney Paul Tucker and Methuen Police Department Chief Scott McNamara gave a press conference on Sunday afternoon describing the incident, which they said took place in the area of 100 Lindberg Avenue.

Seven people were found at the scene with gunshot wounds and one person was injured while attempting to escape gunfire, police said.

McNamara described the event as a “spontaneous car club meetup” organized via social media, and said the department’s policy was to discourage these types of events.

Tucker and McNamara said the situation was “fluid” and that law enforcement had several leads, but no suspect was in custody at the time of the press conference. Credit: Methuen Police Department via Storyful

Video transcript

Uh, thank you all for, uh, coming this morning.

Um, uh Michael Heath, the communications chief with, uh, the Office of Essex County District Attorney, Paul Tucker.

Uh, also in attendance from the District Attorney's office.

We have chief of staff, Sharon Lewis and Chief legal counsel, Scott Delay.

Uh, and, uh, the order will be, uh, we have, uh, Paul Tucker will, uh, make some remarks followed by, um, the police chief, Scott mcnamara.

Uh, and we also like to thank, uh, we have the State Police Detective Unit, uh, Sergeant Thomas Sullivan and Detective Daniel Hinch.

Uh, and for anyone, I apologize about that, I will, uh, turn it over to Texas County D A Paul Tucker.

Good morning, everybody.

So this is another tragic case of gun violence that brings us together this morning on the early morning hours this morning, we had seven people struck by gunfire, two critical five in stable condition and an eighth person that was injured was fleeing the scene received some serious head injuries.

All seven individuals are being treated as I said, two are in critical condition.

At least one was men flighted into an area hospital.

This case has been part of many series of the social media Snapchat events where people meet up.

I'm gonna ask Chief mcnamara to give us some of the details of it.

But here we see again, gun violence that's striking at the heart of the community and we are working very hard.

Our state police detectives have been on the scene all night with meth police department, meth detectives who respond to such a chaotic scene, crime scene services.

Folks are working very hard, particularly with ballistics evidence.

As you can imagine, this is still a very fluid investigation.

We're only seven or eight hours into it.

So there may be some things that we may not be able to tell you right now and we will update you as much as we can as quickly as we can.

We've seen in Essex County just overnight.

There was also a homicide in Lynn again, gun violence has taken a life there.

So I'm going to ask Chief mcnamara to make some remarks and then we'll be able to take some questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate it.

Good morning.

Everyone.

Let me start by saying we are certainly deeply saddened by the tragic events of last night and our hearts below to the victims and their families.

These acts of senseless violence do not represent the values of our community.

So last night at 1:55 a.m. in the police department responded to the 100 Lindbergh Avenue for report of shooting.

We received multiple 911 calls in that regard upon arrival, our officers found at least seven victims suffering from gunshot wounds and another victim with, with injuries not sustained from a gunshot.

Looks like a fall while running.

I want to recognize the members of the police and fire department who responded directly to the scene last night and employed extraordinary life saving measures on at least two of those victims.

I also want to thank the multiple law enforcement agencies that provided mutual aid support to us last night, including Lawrence, PD, Drake, PD North and MP and, and, and the Massachusetts State Police.

I want to reassure our community that while these spontaneous car club meet ups, gentlemen, do not escalate to this type of violence.

Our policy has been and will continue to be to take law enforcement action wherever appropriate to discourage this activity from occurring in the first place.

Rest assured we'll continue to work with our state and local law enforcement partners to addressing our underlying issues that led to last night's violence and we will continue to move this community forward towards healing.

Thank you for getting an answer.

Whatever questions you may have any of us.

Is anyone there's been no rest of this.

Do you have a as the district attorney said, it's very fluid active investigation.

We have some evidence and some strong leads.

We don't have a suspect at this time about these parties how do they come about and what?

Sure it's something we've been dealing with here in Methuen in the Merriment Valley.

And, and beyond, frankly, it's been happening for the last several years and what they, the manner in which they generate typically is the spontaneous being up to their base, social media sources.

Chat, Snapchat and others.

Um In some cases, we're kind of able to infiltrate that and learn where these things are going to take place.

These meetups are going to take place in other cases.

We're not, we certainly have some hot spots here and that we continue to monitor.

This activity has taken place in the past.

Unfortunately, where this incident happened last night, we've never had that type of meet up in that type of area.

We do in fact work with the neighboring agencies and the state police.

We've done a number of operations to discourage this type of activity in the past where we found it here in the, we've always taken law enforcement actions.

We will certainly cite them for trespassing.

That's what's typically happening to find him in an abandoned parking lot.

It's usually young people between the ages of 16 and 20.

Um They need to listen to music, dance, that sort of thing.

So when we see the activity, whether it be trespassing, loud music, that frankly loud music is a pervasive concern in this community and many others, we should only take action where we can to discourage it.

We've been fairly successful in that regard and unfortunately, we did experience a tragic incident here in last night.

Did you find your mother?

We have not.

Are these meetups typically violent?

You are the violent?

No, they're not.

They're certainly a concern for our community in terms of quality of life.

Usually these meetups consist of very loud music, disorderly clod up sometimes drinking, vaping that sort of thing.

It's a serious concern for us, of course.

And like I said, we take law enforcement action where we find it, but we haven't had a situation like this that's escalated to this type of violence in the past.

Yes, certainly.

Yeah, it's uh so the range in age from uh late teens up to 22 and I think to, to illustrate on the chief's 0.1 thing that I would add is that the, that the large gatherings that there were hundreds of people here.

And when you think about the ballistics evidence that we're recovering, it's incredible that not more people were hurt or killed, even though there are two people that suffered critical injuries.

It's pretty amazing also that with the amount of ballistics evidence that we're recovering that more people were in hurt.

I also want to add that we have an assistant here that goes out to all of these things.

Jess Fraz represented us here in Methuen and AJ Camellia represented us in Lynn.

This really is a team effort.

Chief mentioned the mutual aid working this together with the Massachusetts State Police.

Local authorities mentioned Drake and Lawrence as well.

That's really how we have to combat these large meet ups.

And unfortunately, this is turning violent this morning.

Although unusual, we worry very much about it at the D's office and law enforcement.

We worry very much about it in the near future.

No, multiple shots were fired.

I'm not going to tell you how many but multiple shots.

It was not in the hundreds, but there was many.

Was there more than one weapon looking at ballistics?

Does it appear?

So our crime scene services folks are just wrapping up the crime scene now to be taking everything, all the evidence back to the lab.

We'll have a better answer on that over the next couple of days.

More than one suspect, one suspect.

Not sure, not great comment on that yet.

Are you able to provide any other shooting in Lynn as well as far as what led to that?

If suspects, what we know at this point is that there was an individual parked in front of the market basket on Federal street in England.

He was in his vehicle, multiple shots were fired at the vehicle, one of which fatally struck the occupant, the vehicle then rolled into a bit of a ravine into some bushes active investigation there.

We've been in touch with our investigators there as well.

Then police detectives and our state police detective unit assigned to the office.

It's been a very busy night.

Unfortunately, gun violence has been visited upon two very good communities in Lynn and we're doing everything we can to bring the people who are responsible for justice.

There is no connection at all.

Does it appear that Carr was targeted?

We don't believe it was random.

We believe it was targeted with the individual inside.

It was the one that was struck in here are the victims from or from varying towns.

So we have a number of people that listed as victims and a number of people listed as witnesses, people that were in attendance.

I think it's safe to say chief from all over the county and beyond two people are in critical condition from that.

We're hoping for a good outcome.

They are listed by medical authorities as being in critical condition.

We are hoping that they make it all of the rest of what were the victims taken to?

Yeah, we generally don't on that everybody else was released.

So the last I saw was five people in stable condition.

There was no no indication that they had been released as of yet seven people hospitalized altogether.

I take it there's some sort of fight in the gathering and that's what that's.

So we're reviewing everything that we can from an evidentiary standpoint and I would say over the next 24 hours, we'll be able to give you some very definitive concrete information about what led to it and what the results were.

Again, this is only seven or so hours old.

And can you imagine the saying that our police officers under Chief mcnamara's command?

Imagine the scene they rolled up on.

So I think we're in a pretty good place from an investigation standpoint.

State police detectives are out, they've been out all night long and we're going to keep working this until we find who's responsible.

Can you say how many people have gathered hundreds?

Hundreds?

So is this at Bay State Disposal?

That's what that comes up.

So, and she's going to know it's a commercial area.

I think the closest business related to that is a business called EJ Paving.

Of course, they have nothing whatsoever to do.

They will do with this and we had an opportunity to speak with them this morning and they were very helpful in terms of investigation.

They have never had an incident like that in the past.

Had they had an incident like that in the past, they would have notified us and that would have been yet another area that we would have been monitoring for this activity.

So it's another reason why it, it escaped our detection last night.

Any security.

Yes, there are security points that we're doing.

Not just from that business but many others in the area.

Are you gonna be releasing that?

I'm sorry, will you be releasing that video?

Not if it's not in the short term.

Um, so as far as suspects, anything the public should be wary about.

Are you asking for help or?

Yes.

And that's actually how it's going to close things if everybody is finished, actually asking for help.

There were hundreds of people involved here and these are terrible crimes, not only for the individuals who suffer these gunshot wounds, but their family and the community as well.

We are absolutely asking for help.

We've got, we've got a number of leads that we're following from the evidence that's been presented with us.

But I don't think anything could be as good as people reaching out and giving us information, particularly if it's firsthand.

We would very much appreciate that.

Thank you.

I want to thank everybody for coming.

I know it's Sunday morning.

I appreciate it.

I know it was fairly short notice, but we want to make sure that we get out ahead of any of the rooms or anything else.

So we give out the facts and as Chief mcnamara has done in a very clear and concise way.

This is all we can release at this point.

And as soon as we get more information, we'll be happy to get that out to the folks who got the public has a right to know what's happening.

Thank you all for coming.

I appreciate you.

Thanks so much.

Take your time.