Shooting at Asheville Juneteenth Festival cancels 2nd day at Pack Square; suspect charged

ASHEVILLE - A shooting June 17 at the end of the city's Juneteenth Festival prompted the cancellation of the planned second day of the festival at Pack Square Park downtown.

Asheville Police Department charged a 16-year-old with two counts of felonious assault with deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, Capt. Joseph Silberman said in a noon June 18 news release. Police did not release the name of the arrestee because the suspect is a juvenile.

According to the news release, reports of shots fired came in around 8:51 p.m. June 17. Officers found two juveniles with gunshot wounds, and they were transported to Mission Hospital with serious injuries, the news release said. One has been released, and the other remained in critical but stable condition.

Officers initially took two juveniles into custody, but detectives cleared and released one of them, according to the news release.

"Officers and Forensic Technicians also recovered a 9mm pistol and a host of physical evidence that littered the park," the release said.

City of Asheville spokesperson Christy Edwards and Joseph Fox, Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Asheville and Buncombe County vice president, confirmed the cancellation of the June 18 Juneteenth Festival at Pack Square Park downtown, which was scheduled to run from 1-6 p.m.

The city of Asheville Facebook page posted a statement by the MLK Jr. Association the morning of June 18:

"We regret to inform you that the second day of the Juneteenth Festival, Sunday, June 18, has been canceled due to a shooting that occurred this evening (June 17) at the conclusion of the Festival. Individuals that need to pick up items left behind at Pack Square Park can do so starting at 10 a.m. on Sunday. We are terribly sorry and sad for the inconvenience after having had such a wonderful day of bringing communities together."

A video posted to Facebook at 9:11 p.m. June 17 by the account Asheville Meksut Snitch Selimoski appeared to show emergency personnel loading a person into an ambulance at the edge of the park.

Steve Wright, managing partner at Pack’s Tavern who was on shift when the incident occurred, told the Citizen Times June 18 that the event happened completely in the park. One bullet, which they believe ricocheted from another location, hit a double-pane window of the tavern but shattered only the first pane of glass and did not enter the building.

“People heard a couple of pops, but we really weren’t a part of the incident that happened,” Wright said.

“We want to recognize and empathize, and our prayers go out to the victims of the event in the park,” Tom Israel, whose family owns Pack’s Tavern, told the Citizen Times June 18.

Fox said the MLK Jr. Association decided to cancel the June 18 event.

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"We had closed down already," he said. "We had had a wonderful day and had made the announcements, 'Thank you for coming, Drive home safely.' I was in the parking lot packing up when I heard gunfire. Most of our folks had already left the park.

"The MLK Board decided to cancel, but we heard City Council also decided to cancel."

Fox said that at the time, there were too many questions about the shooting and logistical considerations for the event to go on as planned June 18.

"We canceled because we knew it was an active crime scene," he said. "We needed to communicate to everybody involved — vendors, entertainers, people coming in from out of town — that we didn't know how long it was going to be an active crime scene. We did it for them, and for public safety reasons."

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Fox said it was a disappointing end to the festival.

"It was a wonderful time," he said. "Everybody came together; people were celebrating. It was a beautiful day, and we're sad and heartbroken it ended the way it ended."

Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19 as a federal holiday, is the commemoration of June 19, 1865, the day Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War had ended and that the enslaved were now free, according to a news release from the MLK Jr. association.

"This was two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Thus, starting the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States," the news release said.

Police said investigation into the shooting is ongoing. They ask that if you have information related to this shooting, you can anonymously share information by texting TIP2APD to 847411 or use the TIP2APD smartphone app. You can also share information by calling 828-252-1110.

Citizen Times public safety reporter Riley Ober contributed to this report.

Todd Runkle is content coach at the Asheville Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Shooting at Asheville Juneteenth Festival cancels Sunday events