Deadly Mass Shooting in Southeast Missouri

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

It's a story that should have made the national news, but unfortunately mass shootings are so commonplace that Americans seem to have become jaded to them.  Nevertheless, when a crazed gunman - or gunmen - open fire at a crowded party in a rural corner of a fairly rural state and kill two outright and wound fourteen others, it ought to get some decent coverage.  

A few Missouri news outlets picked up the story about the shooting that occurred at a large (over one hundred attendees) party last weekend in the wee hours of last Saturday morning in Charleston, the county seat of Mississippi County, Missouri.  Attendees had been packed into a large cinderblock building that had been rented for the occasion, and at about 1:00 a.m. shots were fired by at least one individual.

As soon as the shooting began people rushed to the doors and fled into the night.  Two women were pronounced dead at the scene, and the fourteen others were seen at local medical facilities.   Four remain in serious condition.  

Mississippi County forms part of Missouri's eastern border and is located next to the Mississippi River. The county borders two counties in Missouri, one county in Illinois, and four in Kentucky.   Charleston has a population of roughly 5,000 individuals and is perhaps best known for being the hometown of Warren E. Hearnes, Missouri's first two-term governor who served from 1965 until 1973.

Local police are still trying to determine who was at the party, and they are asking attendees and witnesses to come forward.  As of yet the shooter or shooters have not been identified and remain at-large, and the motive for the shooting has not been established.

Missouri prides itself on having almost no restrictions on who can own guns or where they can be carried.  

Young people, liquor, and guns.  It probably would not have taken much of a motive.