Advertisement

2 shootings in Tampa leave 1 dead, 2 injured, police say

Police Chief Mary O’Connor and state Rep. Dianne Hart, D-Tampa, spoke about the recent gun violence.
 
One person is dead and two people are hospitalized after two shootings a few miles apart in Tampa Monday afternoon, according to police.
One person is dead and two people are hospitalized after two shootings a few miles apart in Tampa Monday afternoon, according to police.
Published June 7, 2022|Updated June 7, 2022

One person died in a Tampa shooting Monday afternoon, according to police. Just a couple of hours earlier, and a few miles away, two others were critically injured in another shooting in the city.

Tampa police responded to the first shooting, in the area of E Columbus Drive and N Avenida Republica de Cuba, around 1:40 p.m. By the time officers arrived, one person had been taken to an area hospital and the second was receiving CPR at the scene, according to Tampa police Chief Mary O’Connor. The second person also is in critical condition at a local hospital, she said.

O’Connor and state Rep. Dianne Hart, D-Tampa, addressed the media across the street from a gas station cordoned off with crime scene tape around 3:20 p.m.

“We do know we have two victims. We don’t know how many shooters we have, we don’t know how many guns we have,” O’Connor said. “We don’t have any of that just yet.”

The shooting occurred across the street from a school, she said. However, the school was not in session.

Officers were called to a second shooting, this one at N 35th Street and East Chelsea Street, around 3:30 p.m., according to a media release from the Police Department. The scene is about 2½ miles from the first shooting.

An injured adult male was at the scene. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died, the release said.

No other information on either shooting was released.

The shootings come three days after National Gun Violence Awareness Day was marked by events across the country, including in Tampa.

O’Connor spoke at the event and said as of Friday night, 20 people had been killed in Tampa as a result of gun violence in 2022. The following day, Tampa officers investigated a report that someone had been shot and found the body of a man near the front porch of a home located in the 9800 block of N Myrtle Street, the department said in a news release Saturday morning.

O’Connor and Hart both implored members of the public to call the authorities if they see something suspicious.

Hart says she and other members of the Florida Legislature do not take instances of gun violence lightly. She said many state lawmakers’ greatest fear is that gun violence will rise this summer.

“So for all of us in the Legislature, we’re trying to fight, to see what we can do to put tougher gun legislation into practice,” Hart said. “Because we’ve got to do something.”

“We need to do a little bit of a better job as a community in trying to get these cases prevented before we’re responding after the fact,” O’Connor said.

This is a developing story. Stay with tampabay.com for updates.