4 killed in shooting in southern California, officials say

Four people, including a child, were killed in a shooting at an office building in Orange County, Calif., on Wednesday night, the authorities said, marking a deadly end to a month consumed by a series of high-profile cases of gun violence, reports The New York Times.

The encounter happened around 5:30 p.m. in Orange, Calif., about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, according to the police there, who said that a suspect had been hospitalized and another person had been injured.

Additional details about the victims and the suspect were not immediately available from the authorities, as well as what prompted the shooting.

Lt. Jennifer Amat, a spokeswoman for the Orange Police Department, said at a news conference on Wednesday night that officers had responded to the area of 202 West Lincoln Avenue near Glassell Street after reports of shots fired. 

When officers arrived, the shots were still being fired and the police found several victims, said the police, who indicated that the situation had resulted in an officer-involved shooting.

“It’s just such a tragedy for the victims, their families, our community and our police department,” Lieutenant Amat said.

Representative Katie Porter, a Democrat whose district includes part of Orange, expressed her sorrow on Twitter over the shooting.

“I’m deeply saddened by reports of a mass shooting in Orange County, and I’m continuing to keep victims and their loved ones in my thoughts as we continue to learn more,” she said. “My team and I will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

This month, two mass shootings - one in Atlanta and the other in Boulder, Colo. - occurred within the span of one week. In Atlanta on March 16, a gunman shot and killed eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, at three spas. On March 22, a man stormed a grocery store in Boulder and killed 10 people.

Until the shooting in Atlanta, it had been a year since there had been a large-scale shooting in a public place, according to the Violence Project.