BATON ROUGE -- Officials in Baton Rouge pledged Sunday to do more to fight gun violence after several high-profile shootings, including one at a nightclub early Saturday that left seven people injured.
News outlets in Louisiana's capital city reported that gunfire strafed the inside and parking lot of the Stadium Ultralounge & Bar early Saturday, apparently after a fight.
At least two people were seriously wounded at the nightclub, although not all injuries may stem from gunshots, authorities said. No arrests had been made as of Sunday night.
Macy Bell, 21, of Baton Rouge was at the club when the shooting broke out. She told The Advocate that the fighting began when a man smashed a bottle over another man's head.
Bell remembers the shooting went on for "about five minutes." The gunfire continued outside.
"They were shooting everywhere," Bell said. "It was a whole war zone."
Bell said she ran to the parking lot when the gunshots started and dived under a car, where she found three other women screaming and crying. When the gunshots stopped briefly, she said, she darted to her own car and fled.
As she ran, two other people rushed past her, claiming to have been shot. Videos shared on social media and since removed showed gunfire, shouting and chaos.
Video footage confirms Bell's account of how the fight began, showing a man in black shorts hitting another man over the head with a glass bottle. Then a different man in a blue shirt started shooting in the direction of the original attacker.
Once the shots rang out, bar patrons began yelling, "Go, go, go!" At least four gunshots could be heard on video.
A third video appeared to show another more gunfire outside as bar patrons scrambled to flee.
Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome urged residents to contact police with information and said city-parish officials would meet this week "to discuss more ways that we can work to put an end to gun violence, the public health crisis that is devastating our community."
Other shootings last week in Baton Rouge included a triple homicide and the slaying of an 18-year-old man whose body was dumped in a park.
The woman listed in state records as a registered agent for the nightclub, Debra Williams, hung up when The Advocate contacted her Saturday afternoon.
A club promoter for the Stadium Ultralounge & Bar also did not respond to a request for comment, but posted a call on Twitter after the shootings to "pray for the victims tonight" and "pray for our city."
A Section on 07/01/2019