FOG BLOG TRAGEDY LOG: SACRAMENTO SHOOTINGS, 6 DEAD AND 12 INJURED!

California mass shooting: 6 dead, 12 injured in Sacramento...SACRAMENTO, CALIF. -- Six people were killed and 12 injured in a mass shooting early Sunday as bars and nightclubs were closing in downtown Sacramento and police in California's state capital were searching for at least one suspect.

Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester said at a news conference that police were patrolling the area two blocks from the Capitol at about 2 a.m. when they heard gunfire and rushed to the scene. They found a large crowd gathered and six people dead in the street.

Twelve people who police said were shot and wounded were taken to a hospital or hospitals. The Sacramento Fire Department said four of the seven people transported by its emergency workers were suffering from critical injuries. Authorities said some gunshot victims drove themselves to hospitals or were driven...........Authorities recovered "at least one firearm" from the scene, a police statement said, and urged witnesses or anyone with recordings of the shooting to contact police.

"We're asking for the public's help in helping us to identify the suspects in this," Lester said. Asked if authorities were searching for one or more than one suspects, Lester told reporters that she did not know.

Investigators were reviewing videos from social media that appeared to show an altercation before the deadly incident, the police statement said.

"We are currently working to determine what, if any, relation these events have to the shooting," the department said in the statement.

Shortly after the shooting, video was posted on Twitter that showed people running through the street amid the sound of rapid gunfire in the city of about 525,000 people located 75 miles (120 kilometres) from San Francisco.

Kelsey Schar, 18, was staying on the fourth floor of Citizen Hotel when she said she heard gunshots and saw flashes in the dark. She walked to the window and "saw a guy running and just shooting," Schar told The Associated Press in an interview.

Her friend, Madalyn Woodard, said she saw a crowd in the street scatter amid the gunfire and a girl who appeared to have been shot in the arm laying on the ground. Security guards from a nearby nightclub rushed to help the girl with what looked like napkins to try to stanch the bleeding.

Ten ambulances and fifty first responders from the Sacramento Fire Department responded to the shooting, according to Capt. Keith Wade.

The department took seven people who had gunshot wounds to hospitals, some of them with life-threatening injuries, he said.

Sunday's violence was the third time in the U.S. this year that at least six people were killed in a mass shooting, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. And it was the second mass shooting in Sacramento in the last five weeks.

On Feb. 28, a father killed his three daughters, a chaperone and himself in a church during a weekly supervised visitation. David Mora, 39, was armed with a homemade semi-automatic rifle-style weapon, even though he was under a restraining order that prohibited him from possessing a firearm.

Councilmember Katie Valenzuela, who represents the area where the shooting happened, said she's fielded phone calls reporting many violent incidents in her district in the 15 months she's been in office.