SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A suspect is under arrest in connection with a New Year's Eve shooting at a bar in the Old Sacramento area that killed two people, police said Tuesday.
The 22-year-old man was among three people wounded Monday evening after a shooting that occurred as people gathered to watch fireworks to celebrate the new year, authorities said.
Police identified the suspect as Carlito Montoya, who was in custody at a hospital where he was being treated for gunshot wounds.
Montoya's injuries and those to a security guard and a 30-year-old woman are not life-threatening.
Police say it started as an argument inside the bar just after 9:30 p.m. Monday that became a physical confrontation. When an employee tried to break up the fight, he was shot, as were the woman and another man.
That man, 35, and the employee, who was in his 20s, died at the scene after suffering multiple gunshot wounds.
Authorities say an armed guard near a side door at the bar heard the gunshots and got into a gunfight with the suspect and both were wounded.
The armed suspect ran out of the bar toward a street crowded with holiday revelers but was caught quickly by officers chasing him, police said.
Afterward, police canceled the midnight fireworks show that was expected to draw as many as 40,000 people.
The pyrotechnics were instead detonated just after 8 a.m. on Tuesday, startling residents of neighborhoods along the Sacramento River, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Mike Testa, senior vice president of the Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau, told the newspaper the fireworks were armed with live charges and needed to be detonated for safety reasons.
