LAKELAND, Florida, USA
Tina Smith gestures as she talks to reporters about a shooting Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023, in Lakeland, Fla.
The four-door sedan pulled up near an intersection in a central Florida city where people were milling around, rolled down the tinted windows and from inside the vehicle began shooting in all directions, injuring 11 men, two of whom were in critical condition, law enforcement officials said.
Just a minute earlier, a school bus had let off children in the Lakeland neighborhood Monday afternoon.
“It sounded like it was one of those huge rolls of firecrackers tied together,” said neighbor Tina Smith, who lives 50 feet (15 meters) from the lot where the shots were fired. “But you knew they weren’t firecrackers.”
Authorities on Tuesday offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspects involved in the shooting in Lakeland, a city of 112,000 located about halfway between Tampa and Orlando.
One of the critically wounded was shot in the stomach and the other in the jaw. The others suffered non-life-threatening injuries. The victims were males between the ages of 20 and 35, Lakeland Police Chief Sammy Taylor said at a news conference.
After the shooting, the vehicle fled. Investigators believed they found it Tuesday morning in a Lakeland neighborhood and planned to submit it for laboratory testing to verify whether it was the vehicle involved in the shootings.
“I’ve lived here 34 years, and I can say I’ve never worked an event where so many people were shot at the same time, ever,” Taylor stated. “We consider ourselves a small town and when things like this happen, it hits us hard, at least for me.”