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| Photo Credit: AP. |
The suspect who has been taken into custody attacked Saint
Stephen’s Episcopal Church in the Birmingham suburb of Vestavia Hills, Police
Capt. Shane Ware said, according to AP. He added that officers reportedly
rushed to the church after dispatchers got a call reporting an active shooter
at the church at 6:22 p.m.
“From what we’ve gathered from the circumstances of this
evening, a lone suspect entered a small church group meeting and began
shooting. Three people were shot. Two people are deceased. One person is being
treated for an unknown injury at a local hospital,” Ware said at a late
Thursday news briefing, AP reported.
Ware said the suspect was taken into custody and there was
“no threat to the community at this time.”
The identities of the suspect and victims are yet to be
disclosed by the police.
The FBI, U.S. Marshals and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms,
Tobacco and Explosives dispatched agents to the crime scene and the area is
currently being cordoned off by operatives.
According to AP, the Rev. Kelley Hudlow, an Episcopal priest
in the Diocese of Alabama, told broadcast outlet WBRC that the church and the
community at large were stunned by the shooting.
“It is shocking. Saint Stephen’s is a community built on
love and prayers and grace and they are going to come together,” she said in a
live interview with the station. “People of all faiths are coming together to
pray to hope for healing.”
“We need everybody out there. Pray, think, meditate and send
love to this community because we are going to need all of it,” she said.
The US continues to grapple with increasing gun violence and
mass shootings that has left so many people dead.
Last Saturday thousands of people rallied in the country and
at the National Mall in Washington, D.C, to renew calls for stricter gun
controls to confront the ever odious gunmen