A shooting in Cincinnati left two people dead and nine others wounded, the deadliest of four shootings late on Saturday and early on Sunday in the city, the police said.
In total, four people were killed and 15 wounded in the violence. The shootings were believed to be unrelated, Assistant Chief Paul Neudigate of the Cincinnati Police Department said.
Officers responded at 2:15 a.m. to the scene of the shooting that killed two in the city’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. One of the victims was pronounced dead at the scene and a second person was transported to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he died, the police said.
Those killed were identified as Robert Rogers, 34, and Jaquiez Grant, 30.
Three other shootings occurred within hours of one another: One left three people wounded; another left three wounded and one dead; and another left one person dead.
The person killed in the shooting that left three wounded, which occurred around 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, was identified as Antonio Blair, 21. He was taken by the Cincinnati Fire Department to the medical center, where he died, the police said in a statement.
“This amount of gun violence and the damage this has inflicted on our neighborhoods is unacceptable,” Chief Eliot K. Isaac said.
A motive for the shootings was not immediately clear.
The Police Department said it was reassigning officers to communities affected by the shootings.
Chief Neudigate told The Cincinnati Enquirer this month that a rise in violence in Cincinnati could be because the coronavirus crisis had kept officers from being involved in the city’s communities. He also said the department would need to work to repair fractured relations between the community and the police.