Sheriff: Mass shooting started as arranged gun sale between teens
By Ari Hait
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FORT PIERCE, Florida (WPBF) — A planned gun purchase involving teenagers turned into a chaotic shootout in Fort Pierce Sunday afternoon, leaving four people injured and detectives scrambling to piece together the events.
Initially, one of the victims told detectives that the meeting was arranged to buy an iPhone on Facebook Marketplace, but investigators now believe it was actually about buying guns.
The sheriff said the situation is so convoluted that they are still trying to determine who are the victims and who are the suspects.
The scene on the 3600 block of Avenue R was marked by police tape and dozens of yellow placards, each indicating a bullet fired during the incident.
“This was a full-blown shootout here in broad daylight,” said St. Lucie County Sheriff Richard Del Toro.
Sheriff Del Toro said two 18-year-olds and a 17-year-old used a messaging app to arrange a gun purchase from three other individuals.
“A little concerning considering the fact you have people of this age group dealing with firearms, illegal firearms transactions,” he said.
Del Toro said shortly after the teens arrived, something went wrong.
“Three individuals came from the vicinity of a vacant residence on Avenue R and within moments the transaction escalated into gunfire,” Del Toro said. “We recovered 30 casings at the scene, so this obviously escalated very quickly and very violently.”
The shootout resulted in the three teenage buyers and one 16-year-old seller being shot.
All are expected to survive.
Investigators have since recovered 10 guns, with at least three believed to have been used in the shooting.
Detectives are still working to determine who fired the guns and how the teenagers obtained them.
“This isn’t like TV where this stuff gets solved in an hour’s time,” Del Toro said. “This takes a lot of work, a lot of coordination, a lot of documentation. A lot of work with our state attorney’s office.”
Detectives have identified a fifth person involved as a 17-year-old and are still searching for a sixth individual.
So far, no charges have been filed.
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