At least three dead in shooting at Wisconsin

Bloodshed has grown wearyingly commonplace in US

At least three people were killed and two more seriously injured in a shooting at a bar early Sunday in Somers, Wisconsin, near Kenosha, the latest instance of gun violence in a nation where such bloodshed has grown wearyingly commonplace.

The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department said that a suspect was at large but added that the shooting at the Somers House tavern, which took place at 12:42 a.m., appeared to be a “targeted and isolated incident.”

Authorities said that they did not believe the community was in danger. “We believe our suspect knew who he was targeting,” Sheriff David Beth said during a news conference early Sunday, adding that it appeared that the gunman had been asked to leave the bar and later returned. He said that a handgun had been used and that it was not clear whether there had been more than one person shooting.

The victims were still being identified, but Beth said that all three were men, two of whom died at the scene. At least two people with serious wounds were taken to hospitals, he said.

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He asked that anyone with information about the shooting contact the Kenosha County Sheriff Department.

The Kenosha News, a local newspaper, said that Somers House was popular with students from Carthage College.

Kenosha, a city of about 100,000 people on Lake Michigan, a few miles north of the Illinois border, was the scene of shootings that reverberated across the country last year.

In August, a Kenosha Police Department officer shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, leaving him partly paralyzed. The shooting reignited protests that had erupted throughout the United States over the police killings of George Floyd and others. Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager from Illinois, was charged with shooting and killing two people in Kenosha during the demonstrations that followed there.

More than 600 mass shootings happened in the United States last year, and 147 have been reported this year as of April 16, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That organization defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are injured or killed, not including the perpetrator.