Shooting At Arkansas Car Show Leaves 1 Dead, 27 Wounded

A total of 28 people were shot, one fatally, after two people “got into a gunfight” at a car show in southeast Arkansas on Saturday, authorities said Sunday.

One person has been taken into custody after gunfire “swept through a crowd” at the event in Dumas shortly after 7 p.m. A search is ongoing for two people who are believed to have been the source of the gunfire, Arkansas State Police and Dumas Police said at a joint press conference late Sunday afternoon.

“It was two individuals who got in a gunfight and exchanged gunfire and unfortunately we had [multiple] victims of the shooting incident,” Arkansas State Police Colonel Bill Bryant said at the press conference that updated the number of wounded victims from the previous number of 24.

The individual arrested, who was not immediately identified, was being held Sunday on unrelated charges, Bryant said.

Six of the shooting victims were under the age of 18 and taken to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, roughly 85 miles northwest of Dumas, for treatment. Most of the victims have been treated and released, a hospital spokesperson told HuffPost Sunday afternoon.

The one fatality was identified Sunday as 23-year-old Cameron Shaffer from Jacksonville, Arkansas.

Bryant said the violence rocked the area, which he described as a small, farming community of roughly 5,000 people.

“You just don’t expect that from small-town Arkansas,” he said.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) said in a statement on Twitter that he will work to see if “there are any steps that could have been taken to prevent this type of tragedy.”

Wallace McGehee, who organized the event, teared up Saturday while expressing his condolences to those impacted by the gun violence.

“Something like this to happen, man, is a tragedy,” he told a reporter with local ABC affiliate KATV. “We did this here for 16 years without a problem. You know what I mean? And we want our community to come back. Be strong. We’re gonna get through this.”

Chris Jones, a Democrat running for Arkansas governor, said he was attending the car show earlier in the day.

“We registered voters, enjoyed good music and celebrated a positive family environment,” he said in a statement posted on Twitter. “I am deeply saddened (and honestly angered) by this tragedy.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.