Cops offer $10,000 reward for information after two 19-year-olds are killed and 14 others injured during mass shooting at crowded Rochester house party
Police investigating a mass shooting at a crowded house party in Rochester, New York, last month that killed two teenagers and wounded 14 others today announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to arrests.
Three or four people opened fire just after midnight on September 19, killing Jaquayla Young and Jarvis Alexander, both 19. The party was supposed to have been a small gathering, but people from two other nearby parties showed up, and an argument broke out.
'We will not tolerate this type of violence in our community and our city and we're going to do everything we can to bring those individuals responsible for this to justice,' Rochester's interim police chief Cynthia Herriott said at a press conference on Thursday, as Democrat & Chronicle reported.
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Jaquayla Young and Jarvis Alexander , both 19, were at a large party in Rochester, New York, on September 19 when three or four people opened fire on the crowd
The mass shooting on Pennsylvania Avenue killed Young and Alexander, and left 14 other people between ages 17 and 23 wounded
Police found more than 40 bullet casings at the scene of the shooting on Pennsylvania Avenue. The 14 wounded were all between the ages of 17 and 23. Two more people were hurt when they were trampled while fleeing.
'It sounded like somebody was trying to go to war,' neighbor resident Asa Adams told Spectrum News.
Some of the people who went to the party uninvited were believed to have attended a nearby vigil for a 20-year-old man who was shot to death near a local park.
Investigators believe Young and Alexander were not the intended targets.
More than a month into the investigation, Rochester police officials said that some people have cooperated with them and that they have several people of interest. But they're not prepared to make an arrest.
Police said the shooting followed an argument between two groups of people who came uninvited to what was supposed to be a private gathering
Police found more than 40 bullet casings at the scene. A neighbor likened the shooting to a 'war'
'We need further information. We need more people to come forward. There´s over 200 people there. There should be a line outside of our door,' Rochester Police Capt. Frank Umbrino said this morning.
Along with CrimeStoppers and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, police said they were offering a reward of as much as $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
'I'd just like you to put yourself in our shoes,' said James Alexander, the father of Jarvis Alexander. 'Somebody knows something. And if you have that information, I feel you're obligated to come forward simply because those lives that were taken were innocent.'
Young, who was attending Monroe Community College, was captain of her high school's cheerleading team and a member of the track team.
Alexander, a sophomore at Alfred University, was on his high school's football and track teams and won a state championship in the 4x100-meter relay.
Young, who was attending Monroe Community College, was captain of her high school's cheerleading team and a member of the track team
'This is yet another tragedy where individuals are having these illegal, unsanctioned house parties taking place in these properties, which - number one - is not safe because of COVID, because of the conditions,' Rochester's then-acting police chief Mark Simmons said at the time. 'And then you add in alcohol and violence and it just becomes a recipe for disaster.'
Pastor Marlowe Washington of the Seneca United Methodist Church called the mass shooting 'senseless' and pleaded for an end to such violence.
'I went out there in the early morning to pray quietly at the scene of the incident and to ask God "Why this?" and "What did we do to our children? Why all this!"' Washington told WHAM-TV. 'There will be no further interest in our demand for moral justice until we command the same justice from within our own community!'
The deadly shooting came weeks after the revelation of Daniel Prude's police suffocation death in the Lake Ontario city.
Rochester had already been roiled by nightly protests, allegations of a cover-up, and calls for the mayor´s resignation and the arrests of the officers involved in Prude´s death.
The Rev. Lewis Stewart, president of the United Christian Leadership Ministry, painted a parallel between the mass shooting and Prude's death and called for clergy to perform proactive community outreach.
'We should be just as outraged by gun violence caused by residents just as much so as it is caused by police who shoot innocent Black men and women,' Stewart said at a news conference at the time.