Two teens were killed and five others injured in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on Monday after a planned fight near a middle school escalated into a shooting, according to local authorities.
Two boys — 16-year-old Daniel Jimenez Millian and 17-year-old Erubey Romero Medina — were pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Millian was a student in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County public schools, Amanda Lehmert, a district spokesperson, said.
The five other victims, between the ages of 14 and 19, were also hit by gunfire. Their injuries ranged from minor to critical, officials said.
“I’m frustrated, I’m angry, I’m sad. This didn’t have to happen. It’s senseless,” Winston-Salem Police Chief William H. Penn Jr. told reporters at a news conference Monday afternoon. “Hopefully, we as a community get fed up together and just get more involved, get more nosy. Let’s question our kids like you all question us.”
Penn said police do not have a suspect in custody.
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The melee broke out after two juveniles agreed to meet at a park to fight, Jason Swaim, assistant chief of the Winston-Salem Police Department, said at a separate news conference. During the fight, a gun went off and multiple people were shot, he said.
The shooting happened around 10 a.m. at Leinbach Park, next to Jefferson Middle School, Winston-Salem police said. Jefferson and nearby Mount Tabor High School were placed on “secure” status throughout the day, meaning exterior doors were locked and indoor activities continued as usual, according to Lehmert.
Classes proceeded throughout the day as normal, she said in an email.
The fatal shooting came amid other concerns about teens and safety in Winston-Salem, North Carolina’s fifth-largest city. Last month, Penn said in a social media post that officers broke up gatherings of up to 200 teens — often called “teen takeovers” — after reports of trespassing, fights, reckless scooter driving and other disturbances.
“We are now dealing with the same problem we faced last summer,” Penn wrote in his March post, “unsupervised juveniles.”
In Winston-Salem, conflicts like the fight on Monday morning sometimes explode in violence, said Terra Lataille, executive director of Youth Collaborative Inc., a local nonprofit that provides mentorship, job training and other supports to at-risk teens.
“They don’t think about the consequences, or they are numb to the results of what can happen,” Lataille said. “It’s really hard on all of us, as a community,” she said. “It’s traumatic to our youth.”
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