9 Wounded In House Party Shooting In Central Florida

APOPKA, Fla. -- A suspect fired several shots from a handgun after fighting erupted among teenagers at a birthday party at a central Florida home, leaving nine people wounded, authorities said Sunday.

After the shooting, a suspect left the house party where some 30 teenagers had gathered near Apopka, authorities said, adding a gray SUV carrying that person was stopped afterward and the person was undergoing questioning.

Orange County Sheriff's Cpl. Susan Soto, speaking with The Associated Press, said she had no further information on the person and whether charges were expected. She added of the suspect: "He was identified by other witnesses and it is believed he was the only shooter."

Soto said authorities were called minutes before 11 p.m. Saturday to the home and found six people with gunshot wounds who had to be taken to hospitals. She said three others went on their own to seek medical treatment for injuries.

It wasn't clear if all the wounded had gunshot wounds and Soto said an investigation was seeking to determine exactly what had happened. "There was an argument and it's believed that one of the people in the party drew a handgun and fired multiple shots" inside the home, said Soto, reading from a statement.

She said two of the wounded required surgery and one of them, a female, had potentially life-threatening injuries. She declined to identify the victims by name or elaborate on their conditions.

Orange County Sheriff's Capt. Denise Demps-Rollins had told the Orlando Sentinel earlier that several teens were in the SUV stopped by authorities near a gas station after the shooting. She also said a handgun had been seized by authorities.

Soto said those at the party were between 15 and 19 years of age.

Comments

[Tao21Zen]

03:10 PM on 07/25/2011

I grew up in Central Florida and even now live in South West Florida. Regardless of what stories like this will have you believe, Florida's crime rate is at a 40 year low.

http://www.news4jax.com/news/27678179/detail.html

[GBFive]

10:45 AM on 07/25/2011

The First step is to make people aware of the problem. The easiest way to do this is to take advantage of high profile incidents that involve guns and to use them to get media time for our cause. This bigger the incident, the better so be sure to highlight the carnage and the emotional aftermath. People will readily make decisions when their emotions are elevated that they would not have considered at other times. It’s important to ignore comparisons to incidents that involve other implements such as explosives or planes since these will distract from the ultimate goal. Treat all defensive uses of guns as suspect and doubt their credibility and viability. It might be helpful in these circumstances to confuse the lawful use of guns for protection with criminal use since the moral difference isn’t easily distinguishable to some people. When using statistics, remember to include all gun deaths including those that could be self-defense or suicide. As an example 15,000 people commit suicide with a gun each year. By labeling these deaths “gun violence”, readers will assume they passed because of a criminal act. Since this doubles the number of true gun violence victims from 15, 000 to 30,000 then the number is twice as high and therefore seems twice as tragic and should produce twice the emotional response.

http://tinyurl.com/4k346he

[musicmamaf]

11:35 AM on 07/25/2011

The problem is that people don't follow the law if they did no one at the party was over 19 so no one was legally able to carry a gun so it doesn't matter what your law is the bad people will do it anyway.Don't use examples like this incident to try to stop people like me from my right to carry --plain and simple.People like you are so uneducated.

[eaglespark]

08:30 PM on 07/25/2011

Have any of the readers here actually visited this website? Do some people not understand yet that this is all... satire? Maybe not. ;>)

"Registration schemes are harmless to gun owners which has been proven in Illinois where records are public and crime guns and violence have been reduced creating the safest streets. Background Check Loopholes should be improved to include the Make and Model of the trunk of the car that the illegal gun was sold from since this would help to prove that there was no background check performed at the time of the back alley sale."
http://gunbanner.wordpress.com/

[metmedvid]

02:22 AM on 07/25/2011

Over 17,000 gun laws on the books in the US. The cities with the lowest gun crime rates are those with legal carry laws. The highest gun crime rates are in cities with the toughest gun laws
IE: NY. Logic and common sense dictate legal carry laws. You may be to lazy or frightend to prepare yourself to do everything possible to protect and defend yourself and your family but you have no right to prevent me from doing so. When I can be guarrented that no one can obtain and use a firearm agains me or my family I will gladly turn mine in, except for my hunting rifle, I do love fresh, hormone, steroid and chemical free food. Oh but wait, that brings us back to square one because you believe that everyone should be totaly dependent on the supermarket just because you are.

[metmedvid]

02:07 AM on 07/25/2011

So I guess the anti-gun people would have prefered he drive a 1 ton pick up into the building loaded with household chemicals and indescriminately kill HOW MANY?

[talo821]

11:46 PM on 07/24/2011

Blame anything and everything except the scuz-ball pulling the trigger. Blame society, the NRA, education or social status...but by all means... find SOME excuse.. After all, it's the only fashionably Politically Correct thing to do.

[fieryat41]

11:38 PM on 07/24/2011

Florida, where the jury will go easy on the perps.

[Leebossa]

11:37 PM on 07/24/2011

oh yeah, let's make sure even teenagers can pack heat.

[AyeChart]

11:33 PM on 07/24/2011

Looks like the gun-grabbers are starting a push.  Hoping maybe to abrogate the Second Amendment before Obama's out of office in 2012?

[maxfax]

09:59 PM on 07/24/2011

Kudos to HuffPost for creating the "crime" page and posting these relevant and timely stories. We're losing a generation in this country.

[andrc657]

07:33 PM on 07/24/2011

There should be a hefty federal tax put on the sale of each gun to help pay the medical care for all these shooting victims.

[OdinsEye]

08:01 PM on 07/24/2011

So you advocate punishing millions of law abiding firearm owners for the actions of less than 0.0001% of firearm owners and the actions of people who are not supposed to have firearms.

[dadoorsron]

10:53 PM on 07/24/2011

I think your percentage is way off.

[blueballswitmom]

11:26 PM on 07/24/2011

Your stat's are way off, it's probably more around .0000001%

[Old Jarhead]

08:08 PM on 07/24/2011

Sure. And since bank robbers use cars to get away from banks they have robbed, let's put a hefty tax on cars.

What you have proposed is probably unconstitutional, as well as illogical. How often is one select group (lawful firearms owners, for example), taxed exclusively for the criminal misdeeds of a very small minority? Would you put a tax on baseball bats to pay for the injuries caused by blunt instruments in the commission of crimes? Or a tax on kitchen knives, because some miscreant uses a butcher knife to harm someone? Your proposal uses the identical logic as mine do.

[Michael Maynard]

07:12 PM on 07/24/2011

laws that restrict lawful gun owernership only keep good people from defending them selfes .for this report to be complete it should be stated if this person was a lawful gun owner.we all know he was not.

[musicmamaf]

11:40 AM on 07/25/2011

A person has to be 21 in Florida to have a permit to carry the oldest was 19 do the math

[booshh]

06:02 PM on 07/24/2011

There are way too many removed comments in this section.

[debberae]

05:27 PM on 07/24/2011

Pretty cold, Chris------try to stay insulated in your little slice of suburbia. You are definitely part of the problem.

[bobfarmer]

05:24 PM on 07/24/2011

For those of you who think the NRA should not be blamed for these gun tragedies, well you're dead wrong. The NRA has promoted and lobbied for weapons design, manufacture, importation, distribution and selling for many, many years. They have been obstructionists to reasonable common sense gun regulations at every step of the way. Now, the US of A is awash in weaponry so much so that virtually anyone can easily obtain high powered weapons including children, criminals and lunatics.
For those of you promoting the idea that gunshow sales are well regulated, you are crazier than bedbugs and you know damn well that it is a lie. Gun show parking lots are havens for back alley gun deals. All you have to do is open your eyes. But gun nuts would rather turn a blind eye than squirrel somebodies' deal.
At every step of the way in the gun world, the NRA stinks to high heaven ! There are thousands of good and solid factual reasons to blame the NRA.

[OdinsEye]

10:25 PM on 07/24/2011

You really need to learn more than just the standard gun control anti-NRA propaganda.

[Bob Calvin]

04:49 PM on 07/26/2011

None of us will ever see a response from this person because he'd actually have to get knowledge and think some.

[schotts]

11:24 PM on 07/24/2011

No, the NRA is not to blame. Your diatribe was interesting to say the least.

[Pickles Factorynooz]

04:49 PM on 07/24/2011

9 shot at b-day party, mass shooting at Texas roller rink, 11 shot in Washington state car show because someone joked about car owner's paint job...drunken shooter aiming at light pole kills 4-year old....and more and more if you scan nation's news providers...all headlines validating:

national report stating only 1% of shootings annually are perpetrated in acts of self defense. Is the NRA and their base happy yet?

[Bob Calvin]

11:58 PM on 07/24/2011

I would say yes, we are. That 1% is probably the number of defense shootings by those who are allowed to own a firearm.From what I read in those articles none of those people seemed to meet the requirements, especially the teens.

[OdinsEye]

12:15 AM on 07/25/2011

Successful defensive firearm uses do not require that anyone be killed or even shot, they don't even require a firearm to be discharged.