Dooly County Sheriff Craig Peavy identified the two people killed as 21-year-old Jaquevion Jackson of Cordele and 23-year-old Macaleb Jackson of Hawkinsville, Georgia. He did not say if the two were related.
Some of the three dozen injured had gunshot wounds, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Chris Hosey said Sunday evening, but he could not provide a number.
“We’re still trying to work through that,” Hosey said during a news conference Sunday evening.
No arrests had been reported hours later, and authorities gave no possible motive for the gunfire.
The injured ranged in age from 14 to 51, and they were taken to several regional hospitals, Peavy said. Some were in critical condition Sunday evening and others were stable, he said.
More than 1,000 people attended the party
More than 1,000 people had gathered at the site, and more than 50 shots were fired in at least two locations about a block apart in Vienna, Peavy told WMAZ-TV. Vienna is a small, rural community about 130 miles south of Atlanta.
Deputies were near the scene when the shooting began, Peavy said, and after they arrived more gunfire erupted about a block away.
“We don’t know if it’s coming at us or someone else,” he said. “You just have to keep doing what you’re doing and hope you don’t get hit by gunfire.”
The incident took place over homecoming weekend for Dooly County High School.
One woman recalled rapid-fire shots and people running
Ashley Gee, 30, who lives in nearby Turner County and came to Vienna for the party, described to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution a constant barrage of gunfire, imitating the sound of rapid-fire shots.
“Like a machine gun,” she said. “One person ran, and everybody started running.”
The AJC said the party drew in people from other surrounding counties in south Georgia following a local high school football team’s victory at a homecoming game Friday night.
The shooting was not at a school-sponsored event, said Sherrod Willaford, superintendent of the Dooly County School System.
“We recognize that its impact may reach many of our students, families, and staff,” he said in a statement. Schools will open Monday, he said, but additional safety measures have been put in place. He did not specify what they are.
Peavy said the festivities began Friday night, and that it had “gone well” with “respect from the community” that evening as deputies patrolled the event.
Sheriff says deputies were on hand as shots were still being fired
But the party Saturday night was a “different story,” he said.
“We’re still working through the investigation to see what went wrong. But at large parties with people from different places, not just your locals, sometimes problems come,” he said.
“Our deputies were just about on the scene when it happened. They were at the end of each, most directions of where the block party was being held. But it was so many people. And it was just hard to figure out what was going on,” he said.
Peavy said the shooting was “a learning experience,” for his law enforcement team.
“There's just hardly no way to know how to operate when something like that happens on the scene,” he said. He later continued, “We thought we'd been involved with a lot of stuff. But sometimes it surprises, and it was overwhelming.”
