Suspect in connection with Sacramento mass shooting arrested

Scramento, April 5

Sacramento police have announced the first arrest of a suspect related to the mass shooting downtown in the California capital earlier this week, which claimed the lives of six people, while 12 others were injured.

Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester told local KCRA 3 news channel on Monday that Dandrae Martin, a 26-year-old man, was taken into custody and booked on charges of assault with a firearm and being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm, reports Xinhua news agency.

"As you know this is a complex investigation and we're looking for multiple suspects and so we're currently working to identify what his role was the night of the shooting," she said.

Martin was named as a "related suspect" in a statement issued by Sacramento Police Department later, which also disclosed that he was being held without bail in the Sacramento County Main Jail on the weapons charge and a separate count of assault with a deadly weapon.

According to local newspaper Sacramento Bee, records of Riverside Superior Court in Southern California showed Martin had a 2014 conviction for inflicting corporal injury on a spouse.

He also has 2018 convictions in Maricopa County, Arizona, for a count of criminal damage and a marijuana violation, as well as 2016 conviction of aggravated assault and domestic violence by impeding breathing.

However, Sacramento County District Attorney Ann Marie Schubert noted in a statement on Monday that Martin had not been arrested for homicide.

"This is an ongoing investigation and we anticipate more arrests in this case," Schubert said.

A law enforcement source revealed that detectives are studying videos from the shooting scene when gunfire erupted at 2 a.m. on Sunday to determine how many potential shooters were involved in the incident and they believed that the shooting involved exchanges of gunfire between multiple shooters, Sacramento Bee reported.

The potential suspects are validated gang members and the shooting left more than 100 shell casings at the scene, the report said.

Gun violence has been on the rise across the US in the past few years, fuelled by multiple factors, from the economic and social disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic to the unrest during the 2020 elections, as well as a surge in gun sales.

More than 17,000 people have died or been injured due to gun violence in the country so far this year, during which America has seen at least 110 mass shootings, according to a database run by the non-profit research group Gun Violence Archive.